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The following paragraphs may be read aloud during the playing of "Tragic Magic," the fourth piece on the 1973 Traffic album, Shoot out at the Fantasy Factory. Ian Pruneface wiped the grin from off his face to say, "It's hardly public knowledge; keep it under your hat. I go up there to be pruned." "What there is done for you, Pruneface -- and by whom?" asked his colleague, John, the biffy one. "All the dead hairs, skin layers, corns, and more, all the dredge from my system -- it's all clipped, sanded and dermaplasted by exclusively educated doctors of that sort of thing. I don't tell them what to do. They all graduated from the School of Life. They know. They're in the superior posture of knowing what's best for me, knowledge which comes from the observing of, while not being me. Me? All I do is grow. I don't know what is what, or which of what of that within me which grows is good, worth saving, or bad, worth pruning. I leave to them the job of pruning me." Stirred, John said, "Your words entice me, Ian Pruneface. May I join you on this, your next session?" "Surely. Come as my guest. But don't be overwhelmed by sales talk. Pruners are professionals." While climbing, John and Ian conversed. John said, "I'm no stranger to professionals in the health care field. Listen and I will recall to you my experience with acupuncture, where doses of electricity were injected with pins." "How was it?" "Relaxing. I am sufficiently relaxed to exert myself." They wound their way up a craggy hill past ridges strewn with skulls and bones to a pointed precipice that attracted great birds. And there they were not to die like the others before them, but were, instead, to contend with a night of amoral wind. Incontestable power of suggestion urged in them whispers of altruistic self-sacrifice. They attacked each other, to save one another on the cliffs, singing as they did in tones of sweet seduction:
-- You put your faith elsewhere, in other beings, Thus passed the night and in the calm before dawn, members of the secret society of skull and bones approached them. Recognizing this sign as a recognition, Ian and John thought, I'm the special one that they want among them. The skull and bones representatives said, "We come here where you are after you've arrived so far on your own, as you have." * * * Dawn broke last for the valley below, and back home bathing in the misty morning sunrays, John's father said, "The most perverse thing about their playtime is their failure to be involved in any organized sports activity and for that," he concluded, speaking over the phone with Ian's dad, "I'm concerned about John's relationship with your boy. Ian's a fine lad, and a class step up in terms of prior companions John's had, but I'm worried. Exactly how do they have the good time he so adamantly insists they have?" He was answered with a door slam. John had returned. Unable to penetrate the happenings of the past 12 hours, John's father advised John to stop wasting time and with Ian and to concentrate on school. Although John had not been "grounded," he did not go out the next night and lost a desire to do anything. He blamed his father for making him feel incapacitated and incapable of ever again leaving their octagonal house.Later that week, John Biffy, lately of the sunken eyes, yelled at his father, saying, "You're preventing me from enjoying my life, motherfucker." "Not true," his advisors assured him. "You are master of your fate." John rejected their reasoning. His connection with the skull and bones severed. As hair grew from all parts of him, the hundred little fingers and toes he sprouted become entangled with the main ones. Remember what all good Witchfinders know: Happiness prevails in an Octagonal house, although its inhabitants meet fates of death and prolonged decay.
—Peter Dizozza's "Pruning" |