Bought in 2000 for £15.90, shortly after it came out, from a boutique CD shop on Sheffield's Division Street that specialised in classical music (it didn't last long).
Notwithstanding the damp squib that was Monsters of Grace (which I see now has now been released
itself), I hoped Robert Wilson might again bring out the best in Philip Glass, as he had with Einstein on the Beach. At the time I remember being disappointed, and consequently I've barely listened to the CD since, but now it seems pretty decent. OK, it's not as breathtakingly fresh and original and strange as Einstein was when I first heard it, but that would have been impossible.
The CD came in a thick box with a 40-page booklet, including lyrics and an account of the hubristic folly that was The CIVIL warS. The 'opera' was never performed in full, but left a few enticing fragments, including David Byrne's Music from the Knee Plays. Perhaps it's one of those things that becomes more enticing in the imagination than it ever could have been in reality, and it engages by leading you to add in all the missing pieces. There are times when I could quite see myself devoting the rest of my life to this endeavour and the rest of Robert Wilson's work. I suspect someone is tucked away with a cushy job at a mid-western university right now, doing exactly that.
I love Wilson's semi-nonsense words, with their syntax fragmented as though by OCD or Tourette Syndrome. I'd never read them on a page — so I won't reproduce any here — but they make a whole different kind of sense when coupled to Glass's repetitions.
If you ever get the chance to see the BBC Arena profile of Robert Wilson, made in the aftermath of The CIVIL warS, please don't miss it.
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