Last Words by Carlin George

Author:Carlin George [Carlin George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Published: 2010-07-21T17:31:05.764000+00:00

THE LONG EPIPHANY

mally go to a place like the Copacabana. So you'll get a younger,

TV-audience crowd. You'll be okay."

The Copa was owned by Jules Podell, an old-line, semi-gangster

type with this big pinkie ring that he would tap loudly on the table

when he didn't like something.

So I did my act: "Indian Sergeant," "Hippy-Dippy Weatherman,"

"Wonderful WINO," all the standard stuff, but less convincingly

than ever. Sometimes midway through the show, not having my

heart in it, with Podell sitting out there, I'd start in on the Copa itself:

"These dumps went out of style in the 1940s and they forgot to close."

Tap tap tap tap.

Some nights I'd lie down on the floor under the piano and describe its underside: "There are vertical and diagonal pieces of

wood with little nails in them and one of them says, 'New York City

00-601.' " Or still lying on the floor I ' d describe the ceiling of the

club—unfavorably. Another time, I brought the Yellow Pages onstage: "I'm now going to read from 'Upholsterers.' " Which I did.

There'd be a few embarrassed, unbelieving laughs. Perhaps there

were some people in the audience who'd heard of Dada surrealism

and thought it was Dada. But not a lot. And always from the table

out there in the darkness: tap, tap, tap, tap, tap!

This went on for three entire weeks, the tirades and Dada shit alternating with the not even halfhearted performances. Every night

I would ask to be fired onstage. I would say, "Please fire me." Podell

wouldn't do it. Just the tapping.

Then, on my next-to-last night, during the first show, in the final

minutes of my final piece . . . they slowly turned down the lights on

me. Ever so slowly, as if the sun were setting. Then, just as slowly,

they turned my volume off. At the end I was standing onstage, in the

dark, in total silence. In a way it was kind of perfect. The lights had

gone down on that part of my life.

It was January 6, 1970—the Feast of the Epiphany. A great start

to a watershed year. I'd now been fired from two of the supposedly

more prestigious and certainly more high-visibility mainstream locations in the country. And while the Frontier could be written off

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