the content of the party is the form of the people...

in response to meara's rousing communist anthem, i'm posting the lyrics to the rap from dirty pages. this was the final scene in a series of encounters between two characters called "aesthetics." one of was a populist rural type (played by me, in overalls), and the other was played with buttoned-down professorial gravitas by jacob. he got the job setting the party's aesthetic, and i came to his office to protest. and it went like something like this:

The content of the Party is the form of the People (x6)

I found out there’s a schism

Between my own vision

And the bleak steel-grey skies

Of socialist realism

I’m an underemployed aesthetic

Damn right, it’s pathetic

I got room for the Party

But the Party won’t let itself

Open up the doors (what)

Find a common cause

Listen up to the will of the people

Before you feed the people yours

All y’all are simple-minded cookie-cutter propagandists

I’m speaking for my people, here to say that we can’t stand it

We panned it

It’s not like we don’t understand it

Bitch, we hate on your aesthetic

We want people’s culture: we demand it

We’re making whole-wheat art – we’re tired of your whack-ass canned shit

It’s bland shit

And now I know for sure that you’re offended

You wanna smack my ass in public, fuckin reprimand it

The KGB’s got camera’s trained on me, but they ain’t Candid

Dong Fong Hong, you got me all wrong

Yo soy cubano, sou de Angola,

Russia, China, and North Vietnam

The people got my back: you know that they’re respectin’ me

The Party’s whack, though, cuz it only wants to step to me

I know you’re lacking – it’s a cultural vasectomy

And I’m-a smack that shit with all aesthetic left in me.

I got the wherewithal

To truly answer Marx’s call

Knock down aesthetic Berlin walls

Like Karl Rove or Riefenstahl

I got the predilection

Aesthetical conviction

Your party’s what I’m fixin

I’m fucking Solzhenistyn

I plough your fields and plant your gulag grain

And still compose

I wrote a song about it: like to hear it?

Here it goes:

The content of the Party is the form of the People

...and then i got dragged offstage by some burly security guards, who were actually probably some reed-thin junior girls. there was also a coda in the final scene of the show.

(You know my name is Raphi but my people call me Raph

I had a little cold last week; I had a little cough

I’m here to blow aesthetics up: I’m like a molotov.

It’s time to get your glastnost on and get your Gorbachev.)