That Dome in Air - Robyn Hitchcock Quotes

"Storefront Hitchcock"

The following are monologues Robyn delivers between songs in the film "Storefront Hitchcock," by Jonathan Demme (who put the big suit on David Byrne in the Talking Heads film "Stop Making Sense").

I transcribed these from the CD, so I'm missing the one or two more monologues that only appear in the film, and perhaps on the LP (which has more songs and, probably, more monologues).

The horrible section titles are my all fault.

Song Intros, Existence, and Spleens-a-Go-Go

"I don't know why people ever actually introduce songs because the song itself is its introduction to itself, it's like if you meet somebody named Martha they say 'this is Martha,' only, you know, that person happens to be NAMED Martha, just as I might be called 'Bloomingdale's' or Deni might be called 'Staten Island,' but that's really only the beginning of the story.

You know, Martha is a whole mass of molecules and complexes and things bound together by terrifying physical improbabilities and the truth is she could fly apart at any moment, like some terrible pent-up loch that's waiting to snap and spatter her psyche across the universe. God knows, it -- it IS disgusting, Deni, it's life, you know if it weren't for our ribcages it would just be spleens-a-go-go. Not just you and me here, with this live audience, but worse -- imagine there are people seeing this thing in art house movies all over the place and they're going to have to check their stomachs, suppose if they'd managed to buy an ice cream, you know, they could be sticking their fingers in -- at least they know if it's cold.

But, I mean, you know, people are just held in by all this stuff and then they're called almost insultingly a single name. I mean, what's the name of this song really mean? I can say what the song is called, which isn't going to give you much of a clue unless you've heard it before, or I can explain what it's about and I'm going to be lying, so, in the end, there's not much point in it, really."

break

Church, Infidels, and Carcasses

"I don't know what kind of church you like to imagine but I like to imagine a church full of carcasses. You know, there's one big carcass at the end in extreme pain and there's a lot of carcasses in various stages of agony kneeling towards it, and there'll be, coming down the aisle, these two kind of proto-carcasses with their hat and mangled digits bonded together in a bloody welt, and they're being clubbed by a priest.

Outside the church there's even more carcasses who hopefully are at rest and above the church is a sort of huge mega-carcass with a long white beard and a top hat who's going 'well done, my children.' And there's another, he's on his mobile phone to the bloke in the vestry or whatever it is, and he's 'I think we got more in than usual, Lord,' and he says 'okay, whang it up next time.'

I mean, it's very dangerous to mock people's beliefs because you can be tortured and destroyed by other human beings. Very seldom do divine forces actually wreak their vengeance on you, but it's very dangerous to be an infidel in someone's eyes. I believe very firmly in God, I mean, in terms of spirituality. I also have an infinite contempt for religion which I think is hijacking people's spirituality for political purposes and I think religion is perilously close to pornography in that respect."

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Minotaurs, Duct Tape and Leicester Square

"Ah, yeah, when you extinguish the candle then you have to pay the penalty, and the penalty is that you're taken, you're transported from here by two minotaurs, which you know are human to the neck and then they have bull's heads--they have real bull's heads, they're not just wearing bull head masks; they actually become bull from the neck up--and the minotaurs, they have a lot of duct tape, and they swaddle you in it--or gaffer tape if you're watching in England--and you're swaddled in duct tape and you're carried away by the two minotaurs down an endless series of ducts and then you are pinpointed just above 3,723 feet above sea level and you are fired out over central London and then you come down and you--it's the reverse of normal gravity; it actually gets slower as you get nearer to the ground--so you run out of momentum about 8 feet above Leicester Square and everybody thinks that you're a bomb, a thermonuclear device, cause we've always been brought up in our folk stories in Britain that the bomb would detonate above ground to achieve maximum devastation.

So they see this thing, which is you, swaddled in duct tape, coming down over central London; people begin to flee, and there's enormous traffic congestion, especially on the A4 but also on some of the other main routes, and like the beginning of the A1 and, whatever it's called--Highbury Corner. All that stuff, it gets more and more cluttered and people are fleeing and they're starting to tread on each other in their panic and they're spilling cups of honey and knocking over theodolytes and retort stands and trivets and all that sort of things, and a lot of people are blundering through ancient chemical apparatus and their stuff--the people have got hundreds of--people with slides, you know, slides of tissue, things like corroded lungs--they're spilling that in their panic and they're saying 'just one more cup of coffee, Ms. Patterson,' and then that's getting spilt as well and they're getting more and more disturbed, and rubber tires which have never seen the outside of a wheel--they're just cosmetic--they come smashing through the Venetian blinds and they knock over the paper cups, and they hit the files and the computers all go blank and the buildings begin to shake, and they realize there's something wrong Underground so they have a strike Underground and hundreds of passengers are trapped Underground as you get closer and closer to the surface and then, just 8 feet above Leicester Square you stop….

…so London's in a panic, the whole place is just--I mean, you're not a bomb, you didn't need to explode, it doesn't matter--enough damage has been done without a shot being fired in anger and unnecessary bloodletting, just… I mean, the whole system is cracking up, but you've got this problem: you can't reach the ground, because of, there's a problem with physics… so, ummm, what do you do?"

break

Muzak, Lobbies and Meat Cleavers

[Introducing "Alright, Yeah"]
"This is a really comfortable song. It's a musical equivalent of a sofa or a contour-fitted chair. It's unable to cause you any pain whatsoever--I mean, you know, unless actually hearing the harmonics of this kind of thing is painful--but, it's designed not to upset you in the least; it's not even bland. You couldn't even say 'this is annoyingly comfortable.'

It's like, I was in a lobby once in Minneapolis and--there was a whole hotel on top of it as well--and I was in the lobby and it was icy outside. There were people with icepicks and they were just hauling themselves along the surface, like they do when they turn the screen horizontally, and they were inching their way along Nicolette Mall, and there was a howling blizzard, and inside it was very--there was this Muzak playing in the lobby and I had a hangover and I was carrying a meat cleaver, and I went up to the desk and I said 'Could you turn the Muzak down please,' and they said 'I'm sorry sir, we can't,' and I said--I took my cleaver up--and I said 'Why not?' and they said 'because it's pleasing'..."

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