Only Connect!

There are two Trials, one by Franz Kafka written between l914-15 and the other by Pigmeat Markham, the B side of “Here Comes the Judge”(1968), the hit 45 which famously ordered, “Here comes the judge…Here comes the judge….order in the court…the judge is coming.” The (anti) hero of The Trial is, of course, Joseph K. Pigmeat was a famous neo-vaudevillian black comedian who played the Apollo Theater. Pigmeat’s “Trial” was a precursor to rap and in particular Sugarhill Gang whose "Rapper’s Delight"(1979) famously sampled Chic’s "Good Times" (1979) with its famous “These are all good times/leave your cares behind.” It was only a hop skip and jump to the Digital Underground’s "Humpty Dance" (1990) and its iconic “I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom…I’m crazy.” Talk about punctuated equilibrium and connectivity. Remember the famed words of E.M. Forster’s “Howard’s End,” “only connect!” The whole passage is worth quoting: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”

read "Kafka in East Hampton" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "The Trial" by Pigmeat Markham