I just uncovered this long-forgotten song. Its from early 2003. I think it was supposed to be the last track on america’d, but I seem to have put it aside. Can’t remember why. I don’t even remember writing the chords or melody, though they seem to be on a par with the rest of the album.
Anyway, its a fantastic lyric I think – and even fantastic-er title. In fact, the title confirms the timeline of the composition, since I was definitely obsessed with the Cloaca at the time.
In case you don’t know who Karen Finley – she was on of the “NEA Four” from whom their National Endowment for the Arts grants was rescinded after public uproar about their indecent art. Robert Maplethorpe, more famous for his “Piss Christ”, was one of the others. This lyric I wrote about Karen tries to explore what her motivations might have been for bathing herself in chocolate syrup to simulate feces, as she did in her 1994 ”Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman”.
Karen Finley Recontextualizes Her Cloaca
let’s get down to the brown
the Freudian town of renown
is spelled with a C-R-A-P
she crapped her pants when she was young
and screamed at the top of her lungs
that’s when Daddy let loose with his fist
“now I’ll be scarred for life!”
“now I’ll grow up a butch dike!:
karen as afflicted Child of Zeus
karen as she contemplates the noose
karen is so smart
keran says that in her process
she is very very
I I I I I I
I am very I
let’s talk about I
she missed rule number one
remember to never have fun with your C-R-A-P memories
one moment of sweet brown jubilee
resulted in repeal of subsidies
the snobby elites could not agree
on transubstantiation of cloacal memory
karen and her fondue fantasy
was a chocolate pharisee one too many
karen is so smart
karen says that in her process
she is very very
I I I I I I
I am very I
let’s talk about I
she’s seen all of Jackie Brown
she teases her hair like a clown
she moos like a brown spotted cow
she took the brown up-town
she practices art with a frown
for encores she eats off the ground
she carried it to new extremes
she recontextualized her chocolatey ersatz feces
karen is oblivious its true
but karen is happy in her mileau
karen wants to live off the taxes of me and you
I think I’ll start a cult worshipping karen’s sacred poo