X.

Here, my severed digit (Part 1) (Cambridge, 1939) 2:05

XI. Here, my severed digit (Part 2) (Mexico City, 1951) 3:52
XII. The Warring Gods (all places, all times) 2:27
XIII. A Theory of Puncture (Blairstown, 1986) 4:20

Part Three: The God Realm of the Shamans

XIV. Introduction 1:07
XV. Old Shaman on the Wheel (Ivry-sur-Seine, 1948) 5:21
XVI. Coming At You Through Frames of Sleep (Ivry-sur-Seine, 1948) 6:42

Part One: The Hungry Ghost and Hell Realms

I. Magic Pain (Verdun, 1916) 1:51
BL ACK LODGE
II. Electric Cerberus (Rodez, 1945) 6:09
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
III. Punishment Deserved (Tangiers, 1958) 7:17
IV. My Childhood (Spokane, 1950) 5:26
V. The Hungry Ghost Who Sings In Lamentation (Zürich, 1916) 3:51 Music by David T. Little

VI. The Strange Light in the Lodge (Boulder, 2021) 2:38 Libretto by Anne Waldman

Part Two: The Animal, Human, and Demigod Realms

Timur and the Dime Museum
VII. Premonition of the Worm (Philadelphia, 1964) 0:31
Timur Vocals
VIII. You find a severed ear in a field (Lumberton, 1986) 4:17
Daniel Corral Keys, vocals
IX. Petrograd, 1917 (New York, 1966) 4:45
Andrew Lessman Drums, vocals
X. Here, my severed digit (Part 1) (Cambridge, 1939) 2:05
XI. Here, my severed digit (Part 2) (Mexico City, 1951) 3:52 Matthew Setzer Guitar, vocals

XII. The Warring Gods (all places, all times) 2:27 David Tranchina Bass, vocals

XIII. A Theory of Puncture (Blairstown, 1986) 4:20

Isaura String Quartet
Part Three: The God Realm of the Shamans Emily Call Violin
XIV. Introduction 1:07 Madeline Falcone Violin
XV. Old Shaman on the Wheel (Ivry-sur-Seine, 1948) 5:21 Betsy Rettig Cello
XVI. Coming At You Through Frames of Sleep (Ivry-sur-Seine, 1948) 6:42 Nadia Sirota Viola

Part One: The Hungry Ghost and Hell Realms

I. Magic Pain (Verdun, 1916) 1:51
II. Electric Cerberus (Rodez, 1945) 6:09
III. Punishment Deserved (Tangiers, 1958) 7:17
MY BLACK LODGE

Growing up, I always felt like I saw the world differently. I sensed Both this observation, and clues offered by Anne Waldman’s inspired
the dark side of things more readily than others, and possessed a libretto helped me weather my own dark journey: I contemplated
certain subterranean melancholy. It is perhaps not surprising, then, the Bardo structure we had agreed to incorporate into the work, and
that I was drawn to heavy metal — and opera — and to the works of its hungry ghosts who sing in lamentation. I became more careful
artists like Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, and David Lynch. about what I needed to know. I began to strain to see the elusive
beauty that adorned the world’s tattered frame.
Black Lodge began with a superficial question about these
artists: did they influence each other’s work? But in the ten Indeed, I was seeking something beautiful in Black Lodge, though
years since I first posed that question, it evolved into something deep down I still believed Burroughs’ notion that “you have to live in
much larger, deeper, and more personal. The process of hell to see heaven.” I now see that I had both written myself into and
creating Black Lodge became one not just of accepting the out of that hell. In going through it, I found a new and healthier way
darker parts of myself, but of exploring that darkness: traveling of being I didn’t consciously know I was seeking — a resolution the
through it in hopes that there would be something beautiful, Man in Michael Joseph McQuilken’s artful screenplay is not granted.
even transcendent on the other side.
It is striking for me to hear now, three years after completing
This became frightening at times: I worried I might go too far the score, just how much beauty it contains. For all of its rock
into these dark places; that like Artaud I might not be able to pull bombast and brooding moods, much of it is soft and still, with
myself out, or that like Burroughs the “ugly spirit” would take hold floating, plangent melodies that plead for release. “All I want is
and something horrible would happen. It seemed that only Lynch out of here,” the score concludes; the opera itself mirroring my
had come through his dark engagement unscathed, through path in writing it, as I traveled through my own black lodge.
spiritual practice — a lesson I marked well. 
 — David T. Little
I was instantly lured into the extraordinary project of Black Lodge
(which has engaged a wide range of brilliant collaborators) when
composer David T. Little invited me to write the libretto for this
masterful hybrid of music, live performance and film. This was a
huge honor.

The assignment was initially to summon the antics of visionary

French poet Antonin Artaud, the American Beat author William
S. Burroughs and the filmmaker par excellence of inventive and
wild renown: David Lynch. An immense surreal undertaking for
a feminist! I drew on my love of language, the great tradition of
montage and created an exploratory performative text that
highlights the sense of existential dilemma for the artist in a world
of contradiction, and personal upheaval.

This “rock opera” explores our darkest deeds and aspirations with
insight and magnetizing power. The Black Lodge is a metaphor
for our hidden desires, nightmares, our love and loss. It is a voyage
through the spiritual and unpredictable “bardo” between life and
death.

 — Anne Waldman

This is opera ripping through the fabric of future vision psychosis

where the integrity of classic form clasps the hands of radical
possibilities. David T. Little takes no prisoners here, in confluence
with poet angel head Anne Waldman’s libretto of nature, irreality
and spirit consciousness divining deliverance from life’s spectacle of
chaos and love. You’re about to have yr mind scorched, my friends!

 — Thurston Moore
PART ONE: THE HUNGRY GHOST and HELL REALMS (They go mad)

I. Magic Pain (Verdun, 1916) Prophet eating the rotting bawdies: Ov, the dammed.

…My Demise. (Ov, the dammed)

Our Demise.
Magic Pain. Electricity is a bawdy, a wait!
A resting of a face,
+++ The calm-pressed magnet…

Spells from Artaud Coming back from the dead

His humming, praying On a wheel of a hellish life
hissing, spitting, The howling, howling
Three-headed Cerberus
Asylum experience:
electroshock at Rodez With out-doctors, know patience
55 in all. Ta ta ta ta
Coma leads to Bardo experience With out-doctors, know diseased’s culls
a gap between living and dying. Ta ta hiss
Butch her…whip too, fley, two-tore meant
In the electroshock Bardo, he Doctors, ‘cause human (sic) society.
confronted parasitic beings,
was brought back to life so that Coming back from the dead
these “fiends” could live off him. On a wheel of a hellish life
The howling, howling
Three-headed Cerberus
II. Electric Cerberus (Rodez, 1945)
(Out out I want out)
Broken limbs, fractured, faze
Sum, bar, ‘gain in this botched life
Ay ay ay Cut! Cut!
Broken limbs, fractured, faze, coupe coupe
Holes for a demon… Sucked by larvae
Holy holy Meta-sin lies! Meta-sin lies!

Electricity is a bawdy, a wait! Broken limbs, fractured, faze,

A resting of a face Sum, bar ‘gain in this botched life
The calm-pressed magnet… Cracked and missing teeth
Reap/rest surface… Holes for a demon
Diabolic feeding…
Larvae… What’s missing in a tortured bawdy?
Pulverized states, Ov-mined
La la la la Electricity is a bawdy, a wait!
Death which is black black magic A resting of a face,
Va va va va The calm-pressed magnet…
How a mad man survives the mini-strations of the dock, tours the nurse.
Reap/rest surface Commission overheard in a spin a soldiering one that soldiers mad
Frum, the out side, Ov: a savage b(e)low. men to Bardo, write and walks in concert in conversation, all selves
Artaud rise up the streets of the awakened world. A bilocation of selves
I go through it Artaud and others, of self and writing other to make cry and then
I go… don’t forget it. again the streets of the world unite streets of the world. What streets
(Death shake of Bardo, rattle shape of Bardo ) of the world to spin rubric’s yes yes commerce, a no, a no, no. Tanks of
the blown-off shock world.

III. Punishment Deserved (Tangiers, 1958) (control control control…)

Punishment deserved Punishment deserved

Punishment deserved Punishment deserved

(I’m the doctor here.) I’m the doctor here.

Give you killer virus
Interrogate the suspects
Attach electric drills to the teeth!
I’ll give you shocks to the brain IV. My Childhood (Spokane, 1950)
bells and lights,
My childhood was
Become a berserk pinball machine, elegant homes and
blue, and pink electric orgasm tree-lined streets

Punishment deserved lawnmowers and

Punishment deserved milkman and
backyard forts
I digress…
ugly spirit made me write My childhood was
I digress… droning planes
and blue skies
her death my minutes to go
her death my cruel minutes My childhood was
her death my cruel minutes to go picket fences
her death my cruel three-dimensional chess green grass
and cherry trees
All writing around the sides the persons a galaxy all writing resounds
a hot humbled history. Star stars or stars stars. Look up the stars stars. Look closer: pitch oozing out.
All writing is in fact cut-ups, kid, and history will decide games heated Always pitch underneath.
and heated behavior. Millions of red ants crawling all over.
Look closer.
Become a phantom in Hell Look closer: red ants oozing out,
On fire in the streets of the world Always pitch underneath.
Become a phantom in Hell, kid Look closer: always pitch underneath.
Who me? Quién es? Streets of the world
My childhood was VI. The Strange Light in the Lodge (Boulder, 2021)
tree-lined streets and
backyard forts and The strange light in the Lodge, repository of dark memory, spectral gesture.
cherry trees. In 1933 Artaud performed an enactment of “The Theatre and the Plague”.
Body as future memory, as inscription, as keeper.
Spectacle for the masses. His face was lean.
V. The Hungry Ghost Who Sings In Lamentation (Zürich, 1916) The visionary’s thrust to be incomprehensible. Ensorcelled.
The Plague everywhere, death in the street, in garrets, back alleys.
the hungry ghost In carts of doom, in aporia, in bardo, the edges between life and death.
who sings in lamentation His hands were trembling, eyes rolling into the back of his head.
watch the sky for strafing drones Looking inward, transported to an excruciating Intensity…Artaud in the Black Lodge.
(ghost of yearning) Cave of flickering shadows, sequester and death. What Doctor in this house?
That we all see demon plague take hold, that our hearts break or that fear turns us away.
ancient mind Us too? Could that be every one of us too? Anthropocene, we lose control.
(ghost of yearning) How close we are to dark Animalia, to a Void, the Abyss.
glorious white light O generative cyclic flow and grind of meat wheel. That we decompose, lose breath, and still sing.
(ravage and ravaging, ravaged and will have ravaged Artaud’s apotheosis! Palpable dark spirit-babble in the theatrical light, center stage.
and will ravage and will have been ravaged) Shapeshifting show of demons, all the alchemical nuance as glass shatters.
bright or fierce People in panic, as he gasped, afraid of their own demise. Jeering and hissing.
(feed your ravenous hounds) La Peste they called it, sweeping the land…a crux in your mirror. La Peste, La Peste.
The poet summoning and summoned, poet dwelling in your own gut and burning throat.
radiant colors of seductive desire
illusive beauty adorn your tattered frame

the hungry ghost who sings in lamentation

all shackled
(feed your ravenous hounds)
PART TWO: THE ANIMAL, HUMAN, and DEMIGOD REALMS XI. Here, my severed digit (Part 2) (Mexico City, 1951)

My desire for you is in this severed finger

VII. Premonition of the Worm (Philadelphia, 1966) take it.

(instrumental) The last resistance I have is my body

take it.
VIII. You find a severed ear in a field (Lumberton, 1986)
What may I do for you?
You find a severed ear in a field. You look into it, falling down into it, How serve up my body for your love?
sliding down into it into it like cascading down the spiral inside the
nautilus which spirals down deeper and deeper into the core of your (take it…)
listening, into the core of what you hear, the core of the earth, the core of
the mystery you are perpetually investigating… They call you coward
Not good enough to serve your country
down… down deeper… It’s time for our William Tell act

be careful ugly spirit descends

be very careful what you need to know… write my way out of hell.

IX. Petrograd, 1917 (New York, 1966) XII. The Warring Gods (all places, all times)

You take a television set shut off the sound track and put on an and a death rattle electroshock cuts through the void.
arbitrary sound track and it will seem to fit.

You see a bunch of people running for a bus in Piccadilly and put in XIII. A Theory of Puncture (Blairstown, 1986)
machine gun sound effect and it will look like…
They teach: the worm regenerates.
Petrograd in 1917. And so you test the theory:
How far gone and still come back?
Maybe they’re being machine-gunned you ask...
Will so many small pieces,
Make so many smaller worms?
X. Here, my severed digit (Part 1) (Cambridge, 1939) New syntax brings new meaning?

You cut your finger off to impress a man. They teach: the worm regenerates.
Here, my severed digit – take it. Is it also true for you?
How dark too dark to still find light,
You find me sexy? Inside of the spiral ear?
take it.
Inside a Van Gogh ear…
Here, my severed digit…
They teach you crucifixion.
And so you test the faith:
A Pilate of the rosebush, As you stand there weeping?
Worm pierced upon the thorns, (all I want is out of here)
You learn the answer’s No.
(Mother speaks, mother speaks
(When nothing’s true and all’s permitted) through frames of sleep beyond the door)

No tiny worms. No risen dead. (feed your ravenous hounds)

No rotting fruit on Aspen Street.
No mold transfiguration. A wood shrine with a picture of the Virgin.
8 billion empty holes. A crucifix, wood idol, feathers and ribbons.
My feet covered with layers of cotton.
When nothing’s true, and all’s permitted. All I want is out of here.

Be careful… All I want is out of here.
Be very careful what you need to know,
When nothing is true, and all is permitted. A wood shrine with a picture of the Virgin.
A crucifix, wood idol, feathers and ribbons.
My feet covered with layers of cotton.
PART THREE: THE GOD REALM OF THE SHAMANS Twelve sycamore trees and a pool of oil.
All I want is out of here.
XIV. Introduction

(Instrumental) XVI. Coming At You Through Frames of Sleep (Ivry-Sur-Seine, 1948)

XV. Old Shaman on the Wheel (Ivry-Sur-Seine, 1948) Coming at you through frames of sleep
Threading through frames of sleep
Slow down the clock.
Unravel the coil that keeps you tight, obsessive. (Sleep, sleep)
Abomination and beauty, awake and damned.
(Slow down the clock, unravel the coil that keeps you tight)
Arise,
Can you show me, (Be careful what you need to know)
Arise,
The heart that pulls me, (Feed your ravenous hounds)
Arise,
As you stand there weeping? (Be very careful what you need to know)

(all I want is out of here) (All I want is out of here.)

Lie down as dead and let the sound come through my bones. Sleep…
Old bones, old shaman, on the wheel of time.
Arise, (All I want is out of here.)
Can you show me,
Arise, Sleep…
The heart that pulls me,
Arise, (All I want is out of here.)
Soundtrack produced by David T. Little & Andrew McKenna Lee Executive producers for Cantaloupe Music:
Michael Gordon, David Lang, Kenny Savelson and Julia Wolfe
Timur and the Dime Museum Label manager: Bill Murphy
Timur Vocals Sales & licensing: Adam Cuthbert
Daniel Corral Keys, vocals Label assistant: Phong Tran
Andrew Lessman Drums, vocals Art direction and graphic design: DM Stith
Matthew Setzer Guitar, vocals Photography: Film stills, Black Lodge, Beth Morrison Projects, 2022
David Tranchina Bass, vocals Additional photos by Matthew Soltesz (pp. 2-3, 16-20, 26-27)

Isaura String Quartet Libretto incorporates texts by William S. Burroughs, used with the kind
Emily Call Violin permission of James Grauerholz, William S. Burroughs Estate.
Madeline Falcone Violin
Betsy Rettig Cello Text for “My Childhood” used with the kind permission of David Lynch.
Nadia Sirota Viola
Additional text provided by the composer.
Spoken word for The Strange Light in the Lodge by Adina Verson
Additional guitar and percussion by Andrew McKenna Lee dress in magic amulets, dark, from My feet by David T. Little
Programming and additional vocals by David T. Little performed by The Crossing and International Contemporary Ensemble, Donald
Nally, conductor, courtesy of The Crossing, from their album Seven Responses

Edited and mixed by Andrew McKenna Lee at Still Sound Music, Published by Hendon Music, inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company
East Chatham NY Soundtrack copyright © 2021 David T. Little
Mastered by Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering, Burbank, CA

Special thanks to Raulee Marcus

Recorded by Jim Lang at Knobworld, Los Angeles, CA and Tommy Simpson at Macroscopik
Michael Joseph McQuilken
Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Jecca Barry Edgar Miramontes
Sue Bienkowski Mark Murphy
Additional recording by:
Annette Blum Andrea Modica
Matthew Setzer
Bronwyn Cornelius Beth Morrison
David Tranchina
Shana Nys Dambrot Donald Nally
Daniel Corral
David Devan Jennifer Harrison Newman
Andrew McKenna Lee
Jeffrey Edelstein Chris Nichols
Michael Joseph McQuilken
Clayton Eshleman Alexander Noice
David T. Little
Pilar Flynn Travis Preston
Allen R. and Judy Brick Freedman Thomas H. Platz
Film originally produced by Beth Morrison Projects
Fariba Ghaffari Ravi S. Rajan
Kiki and David Gindler Nancy and Barry Sanders
Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Philadelphia,
HERE Peter Van Steemburg
the Allen R. and Judy Brick Freedman Venture Fund for Opera,
Phil Hunt Abby Sher
David & Kiki Gindler, Charlotte Isaacs, and Thomas H. Platz
Charlotte Isaacs Molly Thompson & the Doodlers
with additional support provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation,
Steven Lankenau Kyle Tieman-Strauss
and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Eileen Leech John Toia
David Levy Victor Wilde
Developed by Beth Morrison Projects, California Institute
David Lynch Robert Woodruff
for the Arts, HERE Arts Center, and REDCAT.
Eileen Mack
For more about everything you hear on this recording, visit cantaloupemusic.com, davidtlittle.com, boosey.com,
and bethmorrisonprojects.org. To get specially priced advance copies of all our new releases, as well as catalog
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