PAUL:	Last week in Berlin, Marlon 
	Rallentando, the last of the 
	sub-monoists, passed on.
	
	Sub-monoism, the philosophy and 
	artistic theory, has had more 
	influence over cultural practice 
	in Newfoundland than any other 
	aesthetic principle.

	And Marlon Rallentando, 
	arguably, defined it.

	Award winning documentary maker, 
	Armand Rossi, is creating a film 
	for RAI Italian television and 
	Bundesbuzztelefunken of Leipzig.
 
	Here to discuss the life of the 
	great cultural theorist, Marlon 
	Rallentando, is Armand Rossi.

ARMAND:	A sad day for culture in 
	Newfoundland.

PAUL:	Yes, another.

ARMAND:	Feeling that he had nothing more 
	to contribute, Marlon 
	Rallentando fed himself to the 
	lions at the Berlin Zoo.

PAUL:	It seems such a ... trite 
	gesture, such a ... a ... non-
	dynamic end to such a dynamic 
	life.

ARMAND:	I agree.  Perhaps his creative 
	powers were failing him. 
	Perhaps, it was, however 
	pedestrian, the only thing left 
	to do. 

	But standing outside the 
	enclosure, watching the giant 
	cats dismember him, I couldn’t 
	but think that this ... end ... 
	was not worthy of this 
	monumental hypothesizer.
	
	You knew Marlon Rallentando 
	personally, didn’t you ?

PAUL:	I knew him to see him, to say 
	hello.  But my personal contact 
	with sub-monoism was almost 
	exclusively through composer 
	Hugh Kuva.

	Rallentando did drop by Hugh’s 
	place in L.A. on a number of 
	occasions when I was there.

ARMAND:	The other sub-monoists held him 
	in very high regard.

PAUL:	They were in awe of his ... mind 
	and his dogged refusal to 
	acknowledge it, I suppose.

ARMAND:	Hmmm, that makes sense of 
	course.  Rallentando was the 
	author of their manifesto, their 
	gospel - “The Tactics of Noise & 
	Five Stratagems Maltese.”

PAUL:	That book ... it ... when ... 
	how many times did I pick it up 
	only to find it utterly 
	incomprehensible. 

ARMAND:	And then, one day ...

PAUL:	Yeah.  I was so tired, too, and 
	suddenly it all made sense, it 
	is a mind opening ...

ARMAND:	And ultimately destroying ...

PAUL:	... experience.  Yeah!  When you 
	finally see, I mean really see 
	that “beginnings are endings, 
	the conception of art is it’s 
	destruction ...”

ARMAND:	That “all narrative is 
	epilogue.”  That “true art is in 
	the event before the fact”, the 
	force of the Ug.

PAUL:	Armand, you have some tape for 
	us ?

ARMAND:	Yeah, this is Karl Maria 
	Brisshandler, Rallentando’s 
	personal secretary.

SFX:	TAPE OF INTERVIEWS

KRAUT:	Hugh and some of the other sub-
	monoists dabbled in the atonal 
	thing briefly, but Marlon didn’t 
	think it was going anywhere.  
	Though atonal, this “music” was 
	still after the fact, it was 
	event, it was conceptualized.

ARMAND:	Resulting, then, in 
	Rallentando’s two ... 
	“compositions?”

KRAUT:	Musical “Proposals”.  The first, 
	to encase Roy Thompson Hall in 
	concrete, the second, to blow up 
	the Boston Pops.

SFX:	CROSS FADE TO ...

BRIT:	Marlon would often make a point 
	with his little pistol, or any 
	sharp instrument at hand.  
	
ARMAND:	( OVER )  Cedric Holloway.

BRIT:	Kuva, for all his brilliance, 
	just did not understand the 
	first Stratagem Maltese.

ARMAND:	“If it is happening, it is 
	done”?

BRIT:	Yes.  Hugh said this was an 
	observation and not a strategy 
	and that even so, what did it 
	mean ?  When Marlon put the gun 
	to Hugh’s head and said “One 
	last time, ‘if it is happening, 
	it is done’”, you could see the 
	lights go on.   It had suddenly 
	become clear.  Hugh was on his 
	knees weeping with the sheer joy 
	of it.

SFX:	CROSS FADE TO ...

KRAUT:	Why Maltese?  They, the group 
	that would become known as the 
	sub-monoists, once traveled to 
	Malta on a whim.	

ARMAND:	From?

KRAUT:	Grand Falls, Newfoundland.

ARMAND:	Quite a remarkable group of 
	artists.

KRAUT:	Oh yes.  So many of the avant 
	garde ... there was Beuys, Kuva, 
	and some of the high 
	conceptualists like Ian Tyson.

ARMAND:	Who left the anti-movement.

KRAUT:	For his first love, cowboy 
	music.  Such a loss for electro-
	magnetic sculpture.	

SFX:	CROSS FADE TO ...

STELLA:	It was during a medical 
	examination that he claimed to 
	have found his “ug.”

ARMAND:	How would you describe that ?

STELLA:	Marlon felt that there was a 
	primal force behind all artistic 
	impulse, something almost 
	animal, rooted in the brain 
	stem, with nodes throughout the 
	body.  This he named the “Ug” - 
	the pure physical source of 
	creativity, unencumbered by 
	notions of audience, genre, 
	realization, content.

ARMAND:	He was strongly opposed to 
	content.

STELLA:	He would become furious whenever 
	it was proposed.

SFX:	BACK TO STUDIO

ARMAND:	Stella Artwa in Lisbon, on 
	Marlon Rallentando, dead at 84.

PAUL:	So sad.  What a loss.

ARMAND:	Thankfully, he’s left us “The 
	Tactics of Noise and Five 
	Stratagems Maltese.”

PAUL:	I’ll never forget reaching the 
	end of the book, after some 
	seven hundred and sixty pages of 
	dense prose dissecting and 
	defining four stratagems, and 
	suddenly wondering, almost in a 
	panic, “what is the fifth 
	stratagem,” and then turning to 
	the final page ... and reading 
	...

PAUL & ARMAND:	“This is about you.”

PAUL:	Wow.  Marlon Rallentando.  1913 
	to 1997.

Page 8 of 8	MARLON RALLENTANDO - SHOW # 18