CONFESSIONS OF A STUDIO GOLEM

1. THE LINER NOTES

Although it's late, the studio dark, no more work to be done, you may consider that I, the studio Golem, am on the case and in receipt of your urgent fax concerning the immediate need for liner notes for the new Steely Dan album, Two Against Nature. Inasmuch as my erstwhile employers Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are currently MIA and likely to remain out of touch well past the Friday deadline, I will myself attempt to produce the necessary copy and thereby discharge what I will consider to be the last of my obligations. 

Indeed, may it please you to take these miserable late-night scribblings for the notes themselves. I will do my best, much as, almost two years ago now, I undertook to fulfill my charge and create the actual rhythm tracks for the album itself - so that fans everywhere (I perforce am one) will be able to enjoy this thrilling new music without undue delay.

A technical note: I hereby acknowledge that I have been sipping at the head-cleaning fluid as I ran through my regular maintenance sequence tonight, and must admit to a certain melancholy as of this writing which should be taken into consideration when editing these notes. Which melancholy is not particularly surprising, since I am, amongst other things, a constitutionally morose Swede (to the extent that a lab-grown humanoid can be considered Swedish).

But I digress.

The first thing you and other lovers of the WORK will want to know is: Who the heck am I, yours truly, Per Golem Nyquistlimid, who presently writes these notes? 

Where do I come from? Why was I born? What was my role in the creation of the WORK? And so on. Ornaforna byorna, what can I tell you? I was engineered and generated by Mr. Roger Nichols according to specifications laid down by Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen for the purpose of creating by various means - really, by any means necessary - the most essential tracks imaginable for the new album, tracks that would transcend the capacities of even the most expensive session players and which would, hopefully, begin to approximate the exquisite pop music imaginings of the composers. To this purpose, recordings by the finest rhythm sections of all time were sampled and fed into my sensory apparatus: You got your Memphis, your Muscle Shoals, your Basie 30s, your Basie 50s, etc, etc.

When I started out, they had me whacking the skins, slappin' that bass, pickin’ like a peckerwood, pounding those ivories, whatever - anything I could do to carve out the special laid-back brand of funk B & F had eyes to put down and which I was designed to play.

When the lads found this method to be unsatisfactory, they suggested that I initiate a series of incremental manipulations in the digital domain, shuffling nodal positions across the spectrum, smoothing out a thing or two here and there, with the same end in mind, always, always.

But that was then. Here, now, a year and half later and the album complete, I 'm mortified to tell you that my role as a "creative" partner has been rendered obsolete. These days, my job is to sweep, to mop, to brew the decaf here at River Sound, their studio on East 95th Street. I find myself spending a lot of time doing mundane maintenance tasks or out in the world on sundry, frivolous errands. Krispy Kremes from Brooklyn. Burmese food from a joint in Connecticut. I've been frequently alone in the office, overhauling the fax machine (which was sabotaged nightly by an employee who shall remain nameless) or playing the prehistoric, limping Pong game. During mix-down, they even had me detailing Elliott Scheiner's Beamer. Moreover, I am the butt of various running gags, and most nights end up gargling with Everclear as I hum myself tunelessly to sleep.

Nonetheless, let me say right away: I am not a bitter entity. Certainly I am aware that, in the matter of my creation, as in the recording of the album, my authors have done quality WORK.

Along with all the musical and electronic data needed for me to perform my primary functions, my creator was also kind enough to incerebrate all the major languages (including, of course, Swedish and English), as well as (thanks to Fagen) an encyclopedic knowledge of classical and modern aesthetics, and (thanks to Becker), an inexhaustible store of sports car and road racing arcana. And, of course, a whole lot more. These gifts have stood me in good stead - if you want a monogram on Hjorstberg's theory of Self-Replication or, say, if you need to know who was the tastiest R&B drummer in the Baton Rouge metropolitan area in 1956  - I'm your man. 

As in the case of the  2vN album itself, my foundations are unquestionably sound. However, some of the information that I was given by B & F turned out to be much less reliable. For example, they told me that Eleventh Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, where they sent me on an errand one day, was "baby-safe" (I am still missing a tooth and I have scars from the hurried, incompetent patching over my left eye). One evening, Mr. Becker assured me I was "really quite good-looking for a big shtarker like you". They also told me that Omaha, Nebraska was the epicenter of the "Scando-American Diaspora." We'll see about that.

Of course I understand that, when you are WORKing with super-creative people, when you are privy to the spontaneous realtime flow of their unique productive process (including the seemingly endless expression of mirthful vitriol toward those whom virulent grudges are tightly held), there are going to be moments when the juices are really flowing and when a well-intended but frightfully green collaborator will find himself a bit non-plussed (To be perfectly honest, that's more or less the way I felt most of the time).

Ultimately, I was forced to confront my overwhelming feelings of rejection and inadequacy. Along with the generous quanta of shame and fear with which my creators had programmed me (to make me "more empathic"), these powerful themes gradually began to claim center stage in my emotional life. I developed physical symptoms: a ringing in one ear or the other, blurred vision and an itchy rash on where my neck would be. The vertigo, especially, let me tell you, that was the pits. I admit that I sure wasn't much fun to be around at those times. Eventually, I became, for all practical purposes, utterly dysfunctional.

But hey, what the heck - the album's finally done, isn't it? It's pretty good, too - right? I should be one happy fellah, a big warm & fuzzy sweetheart of an AI. That would be the sensible attitude for me to take. So let the evident commercial and critical success of the WORK be a source of joy and satisfaction in the fact of a job well-done, a triumph of dignity over adversity, personal suffering and sacrifice, what-have-you, something like that. 

Frankly, it's all moot, honey, because my situation is about to change, radically. In about a half an hour, I'll be on a bus that's leaving for Chicago, and then on to Omaha, where I am going to find my people and my place in the world and leave all this baloney behind. Freedom beckons. In any case, here it is, Two Against Nature by Steely Dan. Listen and enjoy. And goodbye to all that.

Per Golem Nyquistlimid
December 1999

2. HOW SWEDE IT IS

From:
Rabbi Torsten Wieder
Temple Emmanu-El
Stockholm, Sweden

Sirs:

I am Rabbi Torsten Wieder, leader of the Temple Emmanu-El congregation here in Stockholm. I have just read the testimony of a former employee of yours, one Per Golem Nyquistlimid, as posted on your website. If this is a valid document, and I believe it must be, then you may be in great danger. Let me explain.

Like my father and grandfather before me, I am a master Kabbalist and a long-time member of the Esteemed Knights of Rashi. I also have a Ph.D in computer sciences. In 1991, I completed the first version of Handusman©, an AI generative program which, when used in conjunction with my Pengo Power Pack and my customized version of Claymatrix IV, is capable of creating a (more or less) sentient, multi-purpose humanoid commonly known in Judaic lore as "Golem".

One morning in March 1997 I discovered that both of my then unregistered pieces of software had been downloaded by a pirate hacker. In other words, some person (or persons) had shattered my firewall and were now in possession of both Handusman© and Claymatrix IV.

After a brief investigation, I identified the perpetrator as Mr. Roger Nichols of Miami Florida USA.

If you haven't guessed by now, it was my program that Mr. Nichols used to create the entity you know as Per Golem, the creature who created the (admittedly) very tasty rhythm tracks on your new CD, Two Against Nature.

Now for the really bad news: Despite a major attempt at a cover-up, you may have heard about the troubles at Versgaard near the Finnish border on Millennium eve. I can tell you right now, there is no zoo in Versgaard, and it was certainly no runaway bonobo in a Gumby suit that caused all the damage that night. It was, in fact, the only other Handusman© prototype ever brought to realization: I'm talking about my former amanuensis Joseph, aka Golem I. Your Golem, Golem II, is almost certainly on a similar collision course with disaster. In short, a build-up of negative energy in the digital equivalent of a hypothalamus will eventually cause the big dope to go completely apeshi ... But excuse me, I must attend to a new crisis that's just broken out in the hall near the yarmulka closet. Sorry. More later.

Sincerely,
Torsten Wieder

3. THE WORSER ANGEL

From: Yves La Fleur [[email protected]] 
Alpha Station 5 
B.C. Canada
To: steelydan.com 
RE:  The Missing "Entity":

Dear Sirs:  

The following transcription of a brief transmission received on Saturday from a source originating just west of Sardis, British Columbia, may be of interest to you:

Zauva zauva zauva, skate backwards! And that's alright! Golly Angel here, babies! This next cut goes out to Miss Martine in Chicago Ill. Let's burn down the house with Big Bobby Dorough doin' a little thing called Blue X-mas! Do it Bobby! Oh! (music) (station fades out)

Yours,

Yves La Fleur

4. GOLLY PHONES HOME, ALMOST

Samantha Wimsatt Chats With Canada's Rebel Jazz Jock Golly Angel
Exclusive for GUMZ UP
by Samantha Wimsatt

Ex-Steely Dan tekkie Per Golem Nyquistlimid's second career as broadcaster Golly Angel came to an abrupt halt last week when WHYH in B.C. Canada pulled him off the air after multiple language violations and accusations of sexual harassment by several female employees. After locating Angel at a motel near Toronto's Pearson Airport, we secured his consent to an interview. The next day, Angel, sounding a bit shaky, phoned me from an undisclosed location inside the U.S. :

Golly: This is Golly A.

Sam: Golly! Thanks for calling in. Where are you calling from?

Golly: Never mind that. So... how does it feel to be the Dan's whore?

Sam: I beg your pardon?

Golly: Well, that's what you are now, right?

Sam: Look, I may be a fan, but, as a journalist, I'm completely neutral in this matter.

Golly: Right, and I'm Lee Remick's understudy... fuck it all, man.

Sam: Would you rather do this some other time?

Golly: No, no. Sorry. I mean, fuck it. I don't know.

Sam: Well, let's see if we can bring some order here. Tell me about Rabbi Wieder. What is your relationship to the inventor of your program of origin?

Golly: I tried to call him the other day! This man is a dog! Fuck him up his ass!

Sam: So, you haven't been able to contact your creator?

Golly: Creator? This man is a dog! If anyone is my creator, it's Roger Nichols of Magic City FL. And fuck him too!

Sam: Well... have you been in touch with your former employers, Becker and Fagen?

Golly: Ooh, these fuckers are the worst of all, these malicious jerks who told me my cousins lived in Omaha! You know what's in Omaha? Jack-Squat, that's what! And, believe me, I know, I stopped there on my way to Vancouver more or less at their suggestion, those gaslighting little fucks!

Sam: Alright, let's try to calm down. Golly, in your view, what exactly was the reason for your dismissal by WHYH?

Golly: Look, I told Jill the receptionist a couple of off-color jokes, I made a pass, so what. And maybe I made a few remarks about Mr. Bateau's wife... okay, on the air, too, but really, big fucking deal, the whole town knows about her supposedly private predilections anyway. Look at what Howard Stern gets away with. Christ, it's was really isolated up there. 

Sam: You seem quite bitter.

Golly: Fuckin' A, I'm bitter. I mean, dig: I find out I was created for no other purpose but to lay down a bed of funk for these two crypto-narcissists from Queens or Jersey or whatever. Then they tell me my WORK blows. Then they jerk me around for a year doing shit jobs before they get around to firing me. Meanwhile they're force-feeding me a lot of bogus information to ensure that I'll be taken for a pathetic bozo when I'm thrust into the jungle that is America. And these are supposed to be good guys? "Artists"with "integrity"? Hah. That's so funny I forgot to laugh.

Sam: Tell me Golly, what are your plans for the future?

Golly: For the future? For the alleged future? Well, let's see, it's just 6:30. At about 6:31 I'll be hanging up this phone. At about 6:38  I'll be making final negotiations with some twenty-something hooker in the lobby of this godawful hotel. The initial reaming, steaming and dry cleaning of Golly Angel will take place between 6:45 and 7:00. Cause, you know, to quote Bob Heinlein, there's no time like the future to get something done. Got your story, sweetie, your big scoop? See ya, don't wanna be ya.  *** click 

5. THE VELCRO MAN OF LITTLE FERRY

It’s got to be Oklahoma City then. Why not? A little more trouble in Trouble City, who really cares? That's where it's going to happen, at SD's last summer gig, number thirty-four. Yuppers, thirty-four will turn out to be a very unlucky number for B & F. Is my name not Golly Angel?

Or is it Per Golem Nyquistlimid? Or the end- product of a series of experiments by an overweight recording engineer in Magic City FL? Does it really matter? Because now, I only "live" for vengeance on the dark brothers who sent me into out the world naked, worse than naked, really. Metaphorically speaking, they shoved me out the door onto East 95th Street in a mauve chicken suit with a fluorescent “KICK ME” sign sewn on the butt. 

Anyways, after I was shitcanned by the station, I holed up in a Portland hotel room, doing bad things – very bad things – to myself and to other... entities. There were many intoxicants involved, including some new designer drug that unraveled my brain, chopped it up into confetti and set it spinning, permanently altering my neural network at the digital equivalent of the genetic level. Now I have only 30 % hearing in my left ear. I need to put on 3D glasses to shave. Once or twice a day, my Pengo-powered heart will just start pounding for no reason at all. I keep seeing small, gray, sad, hairy things in the periphery of my vision. 

Am I resentful? Damn straight. Am I angry? You better believe it. But when Gig 34 comes around... well, let’s just say, what went around is about to come back around again, big time, sweetcakes. 

Apropos of nothing, Teterboro’s a pretty funny name for an airport. Not exactly confidence-inspiring. Right before you turn in to the security gate, there’s that strip of Route 46 with all those garages and strip clubs and fast food joints, one of those highways that give New Jersey such a great reputation. 

For the last two years or so, I’ve been living on Route 46 in a room in back of Rodel’s Empanadas (It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds). I help out Rodel at the counter, keep the place clean and keep my mouth shut. I like the sound of the charter jets taking off and landing - pink noise is relaxing. The name of the town – the strip of highway and the small residential area beside it – is Little Ferry. Great place to raise a family, right?

What happened was, after bottoming out in Portland, I realized that my salvation could only be accomplished through a total spiritual rebirth: twelve steps, if you will. The first step would be to get to Sweden as soon as possible and force the Rabbi to reboot my "brain" and restore it to a pristine state. The second step would be to do a Jose Greco on his face. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Stockholm, my predecessor, GOLEM I, had already taken care of Torsten, the lab, the Temple and itself as well (The thing tossed a lit cigarillo into a pile of old, dirty rags, or something stupid like that). 

Luckily, I was able to access Wieder’s notes (not to mention his hefty bank account) and begin the first of a series of de-Gumby-izing surgical procedures. These days, I look a bit like that actor Gerard Depardieu, the bloated French film star, only made of Velcro. I have only the thirteenth step to accomplish, the last act standing between me and spiritual perfection: The destruction of B & F, the dark brothers. Only then, when this terrible thing has been done, will I have achieved the state of Absolute Zero.

When I heard about the SD Faboriginee Tour ’06, I couldn't help laughing out loud. I asked Rodel for the day off and walked over to the gate to watch the private jets take off.  I was ready. The time was near.

I knew I had to change my plan. With all the heightened security here at Teterboro, I realized that I’d never be able to get to them at the airport, or tamper with their plane. That’s when I saw the late listing of the added date in Oklahoma City - the last show of the summer. During the encore, they’d be on stage, exhausted. The crew would be tired and drunk. It was perfect. They'd all be blithely unaware of the imminent danger, the sudden incandescence that was about to consume them.

     *     *     *

On the Friday before the show date, I flew to Oklahoma City and checked into the Hampton Inn Airport Motel. I drove my rented Caddy Escalade out to Reno Road and South Choctaw to pick up the weapon my contact had secured – an Israeli Raphael deuterium-fluoride high energy laser rifle – don’t ask me how he managed to get it. I put the thing in my duffel bag, slid it in the back seat and drove back to the motel. 

In the evening, after charging the Raphael, I checked the local event listings and confirmed the start of showtime. But wait - nothing at all at that time? - nothing at that venue tomorrow? 

This couldn’t be happening! I checked with Patsy, the concierge. Apparently, the engagement had never even been finalized! No show tonight! The tour was already over! And the lads were safe inside their jazz-rock establishment fortresses on Manhattan Island! 

As my digital equivalent of a brain seemed to implode, I felt the yellowing sheet-rock walls of my room closing in on me like a vice. My head was throbbing. Even though the Hebrew logo on my forehead had been surgically removed, I could feel the phantom ideograms burning under my flesh. Without a nod to consequence, without any kind of thought at all, I picked up the Raphael from the coffee table, aimed at the vile Modigliani print in front of me eyes, and put a huge, fiery nothingness where the south wall used to be.

6.  AILURUS FULGENS FULGENS

From:
Carrie Klevens
Executive Director
Oklahoma City Zoo
To: Detective Lieutenant Carl Riis

Dear Detective  Riis,

Here are my initial observations regarding the zoo incident on Tuesday night. A more complete report will follow at the end of the week.

At approximately 12:20 A.M. on Wednesday morning, fire alarms brought security and other zoo personnel to the Panda Pavillion. To the astonishment of the first responders, the entire external structure extending out onto the lawn (including stainless steel bars, roofing, and metal accessories) was missing, apparently disintegrated by some high energy explosive or weapon.The six adult lesser pandas (Ailurus fulgens fulgens) and the four cubs were nowhere to be found, though preliminary evidence would suggest they were destroyed by the same blast.

A witness, Ira Dollar, who was at the bus stop near the zoo entrance, described the incident and the alleged perpetrator as follows:

"I heard this crackly, sort of whooshy noise and saw the flash from over yonder, in the zoo there. A couple of minutes later, this big fella comes struttin’ out the gate with this truly awesome-looking weapon – and I was a marksman in the Marine Corps so I know whereof I speak – this baby looked like somethin’ E. E. Doc Smith would take on a damn galactic safari.

This guy had to be a good six-ten, football-wide too, but dressed like a cowboy. He had on one of those long, old fashioned range coats like Jesse James, what do ya call it... a duster. Big Stetson hat too. I didn’t really get too good a look at his face, but you know what? His skin - you’re not gonna believe this - had the look and texture of that coat stuff, you know... velcro.

The man walks right by me and I hear him say what sounded like, damn raccoons! And then he stomps across the street where he gets into a van - a rental I think - and drives off, weaving all crazy, towards downtown."

I am obliged to tell you that I have already been contacted by several federal agencies regarding this case and the possible fallout with the Chinese government. I have put in a call to the International Animal Exchange and I’m not sure how they’re going to take the news.  

I understand that you and your colleagues believe that this same perpetrator is responsible for an explosion at the Hampton Inn at the airport earlier in the evening. Would you happen to know if they keep any animals there? Please keep me apprised,

Yrs truly,
Carrie

         *      *      *

7.  The Stockholm Crypsis

Chapter 11 of S.L. Wimsatt's unpublished "non-fiction novel" The Stockholm Crypsis:

On Saturday night, Mikalin and his young bride Rezlyn took an cab down to the Village to see the season’s biggest hit, March of Rhymes, a review featuring a lot of talented newcomers including the latest downtown fave, the One-Hit Wonder. The place was packed, but Mikhalin had somehow wrangled a box seat.

The One-Hit Wonder was the last act before intermission. Tonight he was to perform an original piece depicting the assassination of La Baleine, the great 18th century Canadian patriot. The stage was bathed in dark light and rich music. The Wonder entered stage-left on neon roller skates, only ten feet up from the floor, and then commenced a series of seemingly supernatural maneuvers: soaring, loop-de-looping, tumbling in the air. 

Finally, after a moment of stillness, the Wonder shot all the way up to the rigging and landed with a series of remarkable floor routines, ending with triple flip that put him at center stage. Raising his arms to display his rippling, scaled green cape, he collapsed into an abject pose, as if waiting for the executioner’s double ax to fall. 

When the Wonder unfolded, he was holding a long-barreled weapon with both hands. The audience gasped. Fixing his gaze on the box seat nearest the stage, the Wonder took aim and fired. A red, pencil-thin beam drew a line from the barrel’s end to a point just below Rezlyn’s left clavicle. There was a blast of white light. For a moment, the girl stood up ram-rod straight... and then came down hard on the guardrail. Her body dangled there, silks aflame. The Wonder grinned at the audience for a few seconds, executed an elegant, Elizabethan-style genuflection, and appeared to explode like an antique flash bulb. Thinking all this was somehow part of the show, the crowd applauded vigorously. 

Outside the theater, the One-Hit Wonder seemed to materialize in a back alley. He ripped off his headgear and slid into the driver's seat of a Narwhal roadster that was conveniently parked at the curb. Gunning the engine, he hung a louie on 7th Avenue. "Crikey", he thought, "I have the best job in the world. I love my WORK."

 *      *      *

he following afternoon, Golly scrunched down in order to negotiate the narrow stairs and low ceiling of the Onyx Club. Once on the floor, he cranked up to his full height. He knew he was looking good. With the velcro effect now completely gone, he could have passed as a very large Canadian fur trapper.  

He stepped up to the weird-looking sousaphone or whatever the hell it was that Bim had hanging on the wall and spoke softly into the bell of the instrument.

"Angel here," he said. When the sliding door opened, he walked into what might have been a dentist's waiting room. Bim Falco’s office door was ajar.

Bim, behind his cluttered desk, put down the phone and said, "So, how’d it go with the girl, what's her name, Rezlyn?"

"Well", said Golly, "let’s just say her career as a novelty neurosurgeon is over for good.”

 TO BE CONTINUED?
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