Carlos Castañeda once told this parable about the Conquistador Hernán Cortés. He didn’t write it down, so you won’t find it in any of his books or among his papers, but in any case I heard that Castañeda once spoke of a legend about Cortés, one that he in turn perhaps had heard from his own teacher, don Juan Matus.

My short story ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ is now available on vinyl LP with sounds and music by Petra Haden, Tanya Haden and Anna Huff, Gibby Haynes, and Steven Hull.

The story, a psychedelic parable about Cortés presented as a piece of Castañeda apocrypha, formed the basis of Steven Hull’s monumental Puppet Show at the Glow festival in Santa Monica. (Glow is a unique arts festival that takes place for one night only, every three years, on the beach in Santa Monica.) The LP is published to coincide with Steven Hull’s  exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery in LA.

Listening station for A Puppet Show LP at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, part of the current exhibition My Little Boat of Sorrow, curated by Steven Hull — to 9 August 2014.

The LP features a brilliant new ‘noise jam’ by Gibby Haynes, of the legendary band Butthole Surfers. In his comprehensive sleeve notes, Christopher Schnieders notes that Haynes’s piece — ‘Maigizo ya Bandia’ — ‘synchronizes remarkably with Tony White’s story.’ He’s right. It does. A fact which is all the more remarkable since, as Schnieders tells us, ‘Haynes admits, “I intentionally did not read the story then was shocked to find out how much the writing inspired the sounds.”’

The vinyl LP of A Puppet Show by Steven Hull, featuring my story ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ is now available to buy.

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Steven Hull, A Puppet Show (Nothing Moments, 2014), Vinyl LP, yellow vinyl, gatefold sleeve with inserts.

A Side:
#1 ‘A Fragment from the Lives of the Conquistadors’ story by Tony White and sound by Steven Hull, 12:50 min.
#2 ‘Horse Parade’ by Petra Haden, Tanya Haden and Anna Huff, 3:47 min.

B Side:
#1 ‘Maigizo ya Bandia’ by Gibby Haynes, 10:12 min.
#2 ‘Conquistadorable’ by Petra Haden, Tanya Haden and Anna Huff, 4:51 min.

A Puppet Show LP is now available to buy direct from Rosamund Felsen Gallery for $25.00 + international postage.