Music, Mysticism, and Experience: Sufism and Spiritual

Journeys in Nathaniel Mackey's Bedouin Hornbook

S. R. Burge

Contemporary Literature, Volume 54, Number 2, Summer 2013, pp. 271-302

(Article)

Published by University of Wisconsin Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cli.2013.0014

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/521230

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 S. R. B U R G E

Music, Mysticism, and Experience: Sufism

and Spiritual Journeys in Nathaniel
Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook

he opening metaphor of Jalal al-Din Rumi’s famous

T poem the Mathnawi has striking resemblances to

Nathaniel Mackey’s contemporary expositions of
loss, music, and mystical experience. Rumi begins by
comparing the mystic’s search for God to that of the reed in a
reed pipe seeking to be reunited with the reed bed:
– Listen to this reed as it is grieving;
it tells the story of our separations.

“Since I was severed from the bed of reeds,

in my cry men and women have lamented.

I need the breast that’s torn to shreds by parting

to give expression to the pain of heartache.

Whoever finds himself left far from home

looks forward to the day of his reunion.”
(7)

The Mathnawi is not simply about the notion of separation but

also describes the Sufi path—the mystical journey to God, where
the mystic’s self becomes united with the Oneness of God, where
the “reed” is reunited with the “rush.” For Rumi, as for many
Sufis, music resonates with the spiritual journey. The experience

I would like to thank Tara Woolnough for her extremely helpful suggestions, as well as
the anonymous readers at Contemporary Literature for their comments.

Contemporary Literature 54, 2 0010-7484; E-ISSN 1548-9949/13/0002-0271

䉷 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
 272 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

of music as mysticism is also an important theme in Nathaniel

Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook. In “Cante Moro,” Mackey refers to
Rumi’s reed pipe (nay) and, having quoted the opening line of
the Mathnawi, comments:
[Rumi] goes on to say that the reed was cut from rushes and that what
we hear in the sound of the nay is the remembrance of that cutting, that
the very sound calls to mind the cutting which brought it into being and
which it laments. The sound subsists on that cutting. The nay not only
mourns but embodies separation.
(“Cante Moro” 90)

Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook, part 1 of his series From a Broken

Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, comprises letters written by
a horn player known only as N., addressed to the “Angel of
Dust.” In each of his letters, N. muses on meaning, philosophy,
(religious) experience, and most importantly, his music, particu-
larly jazz. During a series of concerts, N. undergoes mystical
experiences, induced and influenced by his music. To what
extent can the idea of the spiritual journey be seen in Mackey’s
Bedouin Hornbook?
Norman Finkelstein, in his study exploring “why the sacred
remains a basic concern of poets today” (1), reads Mackey’s
poetry in light of shamanism, linking the ideas of initiation, and
the spiritual journey, as well as “wound[ing] and heal[ing]”
(184)—all themes prominent in shamanism—to Mackey’s poetic
world (183–207). The influence of religious mysticism, particu-
larly Islamic mysticism (Sufism), has been acknowledged by
Mackey himself in his interviews with Christopher Funkhouser
(325–26) and Peter O’Leary (37), especially the thought of the
Andalusian Sufi Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240). My aim in
this essay is to explore Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook in light of the
Sufi tradition and to assess the extent to which the experience of
music in Bedouin Hornbook has common links with Islamic mys-
ticism. In the various studies that have been made of Bedouin
Hornbook, such as those indexed by James C. Hall, few have
attempted to explore the impact of Islamic mysticism on N.’s
experiences of music; furthermore, the information about Islam
that has been provided in the secondary literature is, at times,
misleading. For example, the idea, suggested by Peter O’Leary
(“Deep Trouble” 523), that “Sufism can trace its origins in part
 B U R G E ⋅ 273

to Andalusia” is simply incorrect. The origins of Sufism are

found in the central Arab lands. Andalusia, like the rest of the
Islamic world, had a number of notable Sufis, including Ibn
‘Arabi, but the “origins” of Sufism are not found there. In Bedouin
Hornbook, particular Islamic features such as the name Djamilaa,
references to udhri poetry, and Sufi musicians are openly and
easily found; others, such as the use of music to achieve a mys-
tical state, are more alluded to than stated clearly.
English literature has had a long interest in Islamic thought,
from examples of indirect Islamic influences on Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe, as shown by Remke Kruk (359), to more explicit,
contemporary engagements with Islam such as is found in the
work of Doris Lessing, studied by Nancy Shields Hardin; so
Mackey’s utilization of Muslim ideas is not necessarily original.
Mackey’s particular interest, however, lies in notions of religious
pluralism, and he views Andalusian figures such as Ibn ‘Arabi
as representing a bridge between the Muslim and European
worlds, a theme noted by Finkelstein (186) and also stated by
Mackey himself in his interview with Funkhouser (326). This
focus on a universalist or pluralist view of the world is evident
throughout Mackey’s poetry. There are frequent references to the
connection between East and West; for example, in “Song of the
Andoumboulou: 16,” he writes:
The same cry taken
up in Cairo, Córdoba,
north
Red Sea near Nagfa,
Muharraq
(Whatsaid Serif 3)

Mackey has also stated, in his interview with O’Leary, that he

read about the link between Islam and medieval troubadours,
establishing a connection between poetry, music, and cross-cul-
tural exchange, which is manifest in his own work (37). In School
of Udhra, Mackey not only explores the links between the Arab
and European worlds, but as in Bedouin Hornbook, he draws
inspiration from a broad spectrum of religious traditions. In an
interview with Charles H. Rowell, Mackey points out this blend
 274 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

of musical, cultural, and religious ideas in his poem “Tonu Soy”

(School of Udhra 64–70):
One of the things that happened in writing that poem is that I was weav-
ing together references to the Arabic world and the Iberian world, to the
diasporic extensions of those worlds. So references to and incorporations
of flamenco are in there, as are references to some aspects of Cuban cul-
ture, reference to a Brazilian musician, Martinho da Vila, things like that.
(711)

Such boundary crossing is also found in his focus on the “dias-

poric extensions of those worlds.” Throughout Mackey’s work,
his reader encounters a wide range of diasporas. Mackey’s inter-
est in Islam is largely focused on Islamic Spain, a region that was
somewhat separate from the central Islamic lands, politically,
culturally, and physically, functioning in much the same way as
a diasporic community. Similarly, while Haitian vodoun and
Cuban santerı́a are not Christian as such, they both syncretize
and incorporate Christian ideas into their beliefs. The attempts
by Christian slaveholders to suppress the African religious
beliefs of their slaves failed, since “the old African deities, the
Loas and the Orishas, became identified with the Christian
saints” (Fanthorpe and Fanthorpe 13). This syncretism makes
vodoun and santerı́a “diasporic extensions” of Christianity—
ones in which music plays a prominent role. Mackey’s frequent
allusions to them and to other traditions, such as alchemy, break
down the boundaries between the different faith communities:
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are no longer confined to tra-
ditional “orthodox” notions of “religion,” perhaps echoing Ish-
mael Reed’s critique of Europhile, Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian
centrism in Mumbo Jumbo.
Mackey’s interest in the Arab world and thought is clear. How-
ever, the influences of Islam need to be placed within a pluralist
and cross-cultural context. Mackey believes that boundaries are
only notional, and that music and experience transcend such lim-
itations. Finkelstein argues that this transcendence is actualized
in both Mackey’s general worldview and the style and structure
of his poetry (186), which is something that he himself has
acknowledged in Paracritical Hinge (209). This blurring of bound-
aries is seen in the fact that the first letters written to the “Angel
 B U R G E ⋅ 275

of Dust” appeared in Mackey’s collection of poems Eroding Wit-

ness as “Song of the Andoumboulou: 6” (50) and “Song of the
Andoumboulou: 7” (54). The work is both prose and poetry. Any
Islamic influences on Bedouin Hornbook need to be placed in this
context of “boundary crossing,” utilized in a more general belief
in the free movement of ideas from one re(li)gion to another.
The mystical qualities of music have long been acknowledged.
Philosophers from a wide range of different theological back-
grounds have noted the power of music to lead to mystical states,
from Plato (Rep. III, §401; 104–5) to the Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan
(11). Mackey has made similar comments himself, in his inter-
view with Funkhouser:
Seeing people respond to music in ways that were quite different from
music being listened to in a concert situation, I mean people actually
going into states of trance and possession in church, had a tremendous
and continuing impact on me. It’s no doubt one of the reasons I so often
refer to and incorporate aspects of, say, Haitian vodoun, Cuban santerı́a
and other trance rituals that involve music-dance as a form of worship.
That was part of the music experience, the wider context into which the
music experience extends.
(322)

The way in which N. experiences music throughout Bedouin

Hornbook and the subsequent volumes in From a Broken Bottle has
often been described as mystical, but not always as Sufi; for
example, Finkelstein emphasizes shamanism as an influence
(196). The various musical concerts described by N., particularly
that with the Crossroads Choir, also display a number of motifs
common to the Judeo-Christian and Islamic typologies of mys-
tical ascent. However, Paul Naylor has argued that “Mackey’s
conception of transcendence . . . is best understood in a socio-
logical or historical rather than theological or metaphysical
sense—as a human-to-human rather than a human-to-divine
encounter. In short, Mackey offers a ‘horizontal’ rather than ‘ver-
tical’ notion of transcendence” (80). Naylor is correct that there
is no sense of vertical ascent; but there is a movement from a
worldly to a spiritual or supramundane plane. There are no
encounters with a divine being as such, but there is an explicit
sense of spiritual ecstasy and detachment from reality, a sense of
 276 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

union with a mystic reality. While I do not dispute Naylor’s anal-

ysis and concerns against associating Mackey’s music-mysticism
with the Judeo-Christian (and Muslim) traditions, the conten-
tion, here, is that while the “end goal” of N.’s mystical experience
might differ from monotheist ascent narratives, the way in which
N. manages to achieve admittance to such a mystical state does
bear distinct similarities to Judeo-Christian and Islamic mysti-
cism. As the Japanese scholar of Islam Toshihiko Izutsu has
argued in his comparison of Islamic mysticism and Taoism, mys-
tical experiences tend to be universal, rather than isolated to indi-
vidual religious traditions. Indeed, Muslim patterns of mystical
ascent are largely dependent on and developed from those found
in Judaism and Christianity, particularly biblical and later apoc-
alyptic literature. Furthermore, some European writers were
influenced by Muslim sources, as Miguel Ası́n Palacios has
shown in the case of Dante. This universalism is made all the
more apparent by Finkelstein, who looks beyond the Judeo-
Christian and Islamic worlds and argues that shamanism pro-
vides a useful basis on which to assess Mackey’s exploration of
the relationship between music and the “spiritual” experience
(196). The interrelatedness and boundlessness of mysticism
surely appeal to Mackey’s universalism.
The basic aim of Islamic mysticism is to achieve oneness or
union with God, as can be seen in the classical analysis of Sufi
concepts by Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Kalabadhi. Union with
God is achieved through spiritual exercises that vary from one
Sufi order to another.1 The mystic attempts to remove all notion
of the self, achieving self-annihilation (fana’)—an emptying of
the self into which the divine can enter, marking union between
the mystic and God. The aim is to remain in this state for as long
as possible (baqa’), until the mystic returns to the “lower world”
(al-dunya)—that is, the material world—a changed individual.
All Sufis attempt to reach this state, but the various Sufi broth-
erhoods achieve it in differing ways: some use music, some do

1. The Sufi orders vary greatly in their mystical practices, especially in the ways in
which the mystical state is induced, in particular the form of the dhikr. For a survey of
the Sufi orders, see Trimingham.
 B U R G E ⋅ 277

not. There is, however, a strong focus on dhikr, the remembrance

of God. Dhikr is articulated in different ways, but most com-
monly by repeating set phrases, prayers, or the name(s) of God
as a mantra. The mystic becomes absorbed in the dhikr and can
then gain admittance to a mystical state: by remembering God,
the mystic forgets himself.
Not only does Bedouin Hornbook seem to draw on general pat-
terns of mystical experience, but Mackey includes many concep-
tual ideas that form a strong part of the Muslim mystical tradi-
tion. The first is the relationship between Islamic mysticism and
language. For Sufis, words, particularly those of the Qur’an,
have particular importance by the fact that they carry two mean-
ings. The first is the outward, exoteric meaning; but parallel to
this, every word can have an inward, secret, esoteric meaning,
known only to those who have had an intimate experience of the
divine. Mackey’s constant deconstruction of language in Bedouin
Hornbook echoes this, with N.’s reinterpretation of language
being used as a means for gaining understanding or gnosis
(ma‘rifa). The second is the use of dreams; dreams are an impor-
tant part of religious experience, for both prophets and mystics.
The fact that Bedouin Hornbook begins with a dream highlights a
common approach to religio-philosophical experiences. The final
theme is the notion of mystical ascent and spiritual union. Many
episodes in Bedouin Hornbook in which N. goes on a spiritual
journey through his music are resonant with Muslim, and Judeo-
Christian, typologies of spiritual ascent.

The Angel of Dust: Muse, Critic, or Other?

Bedouin Hornbook is replete with ideas and phrases that blur real-
ity and understanding, which can be seen not only in the more
complex ideas of loss and experience but also in the “ordinary”
events found in the book. In most epistolary novels, the reader
gains a real insight into the relationship(s) between correspon-
dents; and, often, the different perspectives of the correspon-
dents, such as those of Usbek and Rica in Montesquieu’s Lettres
persanes, are used to illustrate the wider social ideas at stake. The
same is not the case in Bedouin Hornbook, not simply because the
 278 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

novel provides a conversation that is largely one-sided, but also

because the reader gains little understanding of the relationship
between the two correspondents. As J. Edward Mallot notes, “the
tone of the text suggests an interchange of thought between N.
and the recipient of the letters, . . . without providing either the
Angel’s letters or much assurance that interchange is actually
taking place” (136). Mackey comments in his interview with
Funkhouser that the letters to the Angel of Dust began as a cor-
respondence with a friend, but one which the friend was allowed
“to eavesdrop on, so to speak, though the thoughts were pro-
voked by his questions” (328). The reader, too, is an eavesdrop-
per on this communication, but it is difficult to gain a full under-
standing of the relationship between N. and the Angel of Dust:
the reader does not even know their real names.
The relationship between N. and the Angel of Dust is ambig-
uous, but it does appear to undergo a distinct change. The rela-
tionship is close at the beginning but becomes more distant: at
the start, N. ends his letters with “Love” (9), “As ever” (12),
“Yours truly” (19), “Much affection” (27); but this develops into
more impersonal signatures, such as “Yours” (31), “Sincerely”
(35), and so on. The last affectionate signature is early on (27),
after which the tone is one more of acquaintance than of love.
There is little in the text to suggest why this change has hap-
pened, but it is in keeping with the themes of loss and ‘udhri love
that dominate Mackey’s work. At the same time, N. still appears
to engage and interact with the Angel of Dust and to consider
the Angel’s opinions or questions. For example, N. comments:
“Thanks for writing back so quickly. As for your request regard-
ing the ihamba and the cupping horn, I don’t mind at all going
into a bit more detail” (179). N. also asks the Angel directly for
advice (22). How, then, do the two relate? Is the Angel N.’s muse,
critic, or something else?
Despite the Angel’s prominence, the actual name has received
little attention. The name resembles, quite clearly, the drug
known as “Angel Dust,” and the reference to a “joint soaked in
embalming fluid” (118) during the Crossroads Choir concert
 B U R G E ⋅ 279

appears to be a direct reference to it.2 The hallucinogenic drug

could indicate, as Mallot argues, that all of the letters “are tran-
scripts of drug-induced states, the Angel a muse of abuse that
guides [N.’s] intellectual ‘trip’” (140). But many of the letters
cannot really be considered “trips”: many recount banal events,
rather than surreal, drug-induced visions. Read more theologi-
cally, the name is an oxymoron and inherently ambiguous:
angels are of the divine, ethereal world, while dust is earthly.
The Angel occupies an intermediate space: part ethereal, part
mundane; part “divine,” part “human.” It describes a being that
is either divine, but made earthly, or an earthly creature, made
divine. Mallot comments: “The palimpsest that becomes the
Angel of Dust—the layers of possibility that refuse to collapse
into a simple, static entity—parallels the realms of communica-
tion that can and do permeate our daily lives, involving the liv-
ing and the dead, the seen and the invisible” (140–41). But does
the Angel really occupy and echo this semi-ethereal, transcen-
dent space? The Angel of Dust’s comments, albeit mentioned by
N. himself, do not portray the Angel as existing in, or paralleling,
this special, in-between plane between the intelligible and the
unintelligible, the known and the unknown, the living and the
dead.
The Angel of Dust is very much the recipient of wisdom, rather
than the giver of it. N. gains inspiration from a whole range of
different objects, people, and dreams, but none from the Angel.
The opening letters of Bedouin Hornbook set out clearly the
Angel’s distance from N.’s musical inspiration. In these letters,
N.’s philosophical musings are developed from a dream
sequence (7–9), a car crash (10), oranges and nectarines (16),
another dream sequence (20), and a painting by Irving Petlin
(23). The Angel of Dust does not appear to be a muse. Indeed, N.
criticizes the Angel for making the connection between a paint-
ing and a piece of music, saying, “[I] can’t say that I see the

2. The British pharmaceutical dictionary Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia includes

“Angel of Dust” and “embalming fluid” as street names for the hallucinogenic drug
phencyclidine/PCP (Reynolds 1740).
 280 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

connection you sense between them and that latest tape I sent”
(13). N.’s comment shows a “Gnostic” gap between N. and the
Angel—a separation of intellect. N. can also be quite blunt, tell-
ing the Angel: “You got me all wrong on what I meant by ‘a
sexual “cut”’ in my last letter. I’m not, as you insinuate, advanc-
ing severance as a value, must less pushing, as you put it, ‘a
thinly veiled romance of distantiation’” (42). They also have mis-
understandings over N.’s use of “public” and “private” (72) and
“history” (82). Even moments in which N. responds to the Angel
positively, such as N.’s comments on the Angel’s essay “Towards
A Theory of the Falsetto in New World African Musics” (62), the
positivity is counterbalanced by suggestions for further explo-
ration, indicating a dominance in intellect of N. over the Angel.
However, there are times when the Angel appears to have a
certain amount of “right” knowledge: the Angel rightly under-
stands that N.’s composition “Not of Rock, Not of Wood, Not of
Earth” refers to the fable of Gassire’s lute (29). The Angel encour-
ages N. (109), comforts him (128), and startles him by making a
connection between N.’s Toupouri composition and a Thelon-
ious Monk record (135). While the two appear to become more
distant by the way in which N. signs off his letters, they draw
closer together in understanding; as Bedouin Hornbook pro-
gresses, the Angel of Dust becomes more learned, more aware
of possibilities, less prone to misunderstanding or making faulty
associations. Yet the two never meet (165), and they never reach
the same level of gnosis: they are, as Mackey would have it,
“asymptotic,” a theme of Mackey’s work that has been explored
in detail by Adalaide Morris (757). The closest that the two get
is N. saying, “It’s as though we shared a single set of ears” (158).
N. and the Angel of Dust experience a union of sorts, but one
that is only hypothetical; it is not real. The Angel of Dust, then,
is not a muse, and certainly not an angel. Mackey’s Angel of
Dust, just as its contradictory name suggests, is in direct contrast
to typical Judeo-Christian and Islamic angelology, in which
angels are the vehicles or mediators of revelation, rather than the
receivers of it.
The relationship between N. and the Angel of Dust is more
akin to the Sufi master-disciple (shaykh-murid) relationship, in
 B U R G E ⋅ 281

which the master can learn from his student, but most of the
education is imparted by the master. This relationship was, and
continues to be, extremely important in Islamic mysticism; teach-
ings about the “path” are passed from one generation to another,
through a chain of transmission (silsila) often going back to
Muhammad, the Prophet. It is about such chains of the trans-
mission of mystical knowledge that Mackey read in Sufis of Anda-
lusia.3 The expected reading may be that the Angel of Dust is the
shaykh and N. the murid, but it can also be read the other way
around. This master-disciple relationship is seen particularly
strongly in N.’s reaction to and comments on the Angel’s essay
(62) and his surprise at the Angel’s association of Monk with his
Toupouri piece (135). If we consider the Angel of Dust as the
recipient of wisdom, rather than the giver of wisdom, the con-
ception of the Angel is quite different.
Mallot argues that the more esoteric nature of the Angel
implies that the Angel could have witnessed or taken part in the
opening dream sequence (141); but if the Angel is seen as the
recipient of knowledge, the opening statement by N.—“You
should’ve heard me in the dream last night” (7)—is more akin
to a hypothetical proposition, a protasis rather than a statement
of fact, to be read as, If only you had been able to hear me in the
dream last night. The Angel of Dust can be viewed as being very
much of this world—a figure with the potential for attaining
divine or angelic experience, but someone who is not quite ready
for such experiences. The Angel is still of this world, the lower
world, the human world of dust. And a development in the
Angel’s ability to gain gnosis can be seen as the novel progresses.
Throughout Bedouin Hornbook, there is a sense that N. is writ-
ing down the responses to his mystical experiences in order to
catch them and keep them, before they disappear or become lost.
Sufis also saw a need to pass information about the “path” to
their followers: a shaykh finds a suitable pupil to whom he can

3. This is a translation of two of Ibn ‘Arabi’s works, Ruh al-quds fi munasahat al-nafs
(“The Spirit of Holiness in the Counseling of the Soul”) and al-Durrat al-fakhira fi dhikr
man intafa‘tu bihi fi tariq al-akhira (“The Precious Pearl concerned with the mention of
these whom I have derived benefit in the way of the hereafter”). Mackey states that he
has read the Sufis of Andalusia in his interview with Funkhouser (326).
 282 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

pass his teachings for posterity. There is also a sense that N.

believes that the Angel of Dust can learn from his experiences.
Reading the relationship as that of master and disciple has an
impact on how N. is conceived: if N. is a master/shaykh, he is
embarking on a spiritual journey—a “Bedouin” searching for the
ultimate reality. N., then, must be seen as being dominant over
the Angel of Dust: N. is the Bedouin, the seeker, the shaykh and
the mystic; the Angel of Dust is the murid, the disciple, and the
initiate. This relationship is reflected in the novel’s title: a horn-
book is a didactic text, a summary or précis of the key points of
a more technical work. Bedouin Hornbook is, then, N.’s guide for
himself, through the prism of the Angel of Dust, toward enlight-
enment and gnosis.

Words and Meanings: The Outer and the Inner

In Islam, the Qur’an is believed to be the actual, physical word
of God, and as a result, any interpretation or exegesis of the
Qur’an is an attempt to understand the divine. Sufis, in partic-
ular, have a way of interpreting and engaging with the Qur’an
that has some bearing on Mackey’s own understanding of the
relationship between words and meaning. As Kristin Zahra
Sands explains, Sufis maintain that there are two aspects to the
text: an exoteric or outer meaning (zahir) and an esoteric or inner
meaning (batin). Every word in the Qur’an carries these dual
meanings and can be interpreted through allusions (isharat) to
reveal the “true” or “inner” meaning of a Qur’anic word or
verse. This form of interpretation is not simply allegorical or
metaphorical, since the batin and the zahir meanings are valid at
the same time. In a sense, the Qur’anic text can be deconstructed
through isharat by the mystic to reveal new inner meanings. The
Ismailis studied the Qur’an through a similar hermeneutical
approach, ta’wil (“interpretation”), which Mackey refers to in
“Song of the Andoumboulou: 26” (Whatsaid Serif 57).
Words, for N., are extremely important, if not the basis of
meaning itself. Like Ludwig Wittgenstein, who spends much of
his Philosophical Investigations exploring different types of
Sprachspiel, or “word games,” Mackey, in Bedouin Hornbook,
 B U R G E ⋅ 283

deploys a number of word games and wordplays, as Finkelstein

also notes (194–95). Some, such as the misspelling of “Djamilaa”
with a doubled “a” and “Djarred,” both with the French trans-
literation “dj,” appear to disconcert or disconnect the reader from
the text and from what is normally expected. Wittgenstein, dis-
cussing the form of printed text, comments, “Think of the uneas-
iness we feel when the spelling of a word is changed” (74). This
disconcertment and disconnection from expectation does not
simply disorient but also reinforces Bedouin Hornbook’s themes
of loss and asymptosy: the reader becomes distant from N.’s
word world. In Bedouin Hornbook, word forms have become less
stable; there is no longer any surety of what is acceptable or
expected. Mackey takes word forms into a Derridean world of
uncertainty and association, where meaning is up for grabs, mal-
leable and fractured; but in mysticism such uncertainty is not
problematic, because it broadens the scope of meaning.
In many cases, N.’s discussions of words and their meanings
explore apparent and deeper meanings, meanings that are hid-
den (that is, batin). The band’s “exegesis” of the Sutter Street
graffito (32–34) reveals each member’s hermeneutical approach
to a seemingly problematic text: “Mr. Slick and Mister Brother
are one of the two most baddest dude in town, and Sutter Street”
(33).4 Penguin reacts to it sociologically or psychologically,
believing the grammatical errors to be “the sign of a deep-seated
upheaval in the consciousnesses of the folk, an insistent inter-
rogation of the bounds between individual and collective iden-
tities” (33). Aunt Nancy takes the statement at face value, the
errors being “more likely an oversight than a deliberate tactic”
(33) and the result of “[b]ad schooling” (34). Lambert, who
encountered the text first, argues that the writers had been “lit-

4. Relevant here is Jacques Derrida’s essay on Nietzsche’s umbrella (122–43). The dis-
cussion concerns a short note left by Nietzsche, which says, “I have forgotten my
umbrella.” Derrida argues: “Perhaps it was the note for some phrase to be written here
or there. There is no infallible way of knowing the occasion of this sample or what it
could have been later grafted onto. We never will know for sure what Nietzsche wanted
to say or do when he noted these words, nor even that he actually wanted anything”
(123). Similarly, the band will never know what the graffito meant, but that does not
mean that they cannot use it to explore ideas.
 284 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

erally shaken by powers—whether artistic or autistic he couldn’t,

he admitted, say—which were neither to be trifled with nor
explained away by hardheaded sophistries disguised as com-
mon sense.” N. remains quiet but finally comments on the use
of most baddest, “pointing out that instead of redundant I heard
‘most baddest’ as a novel, rule-abandoning technique for inten-
sification.” It is important that it is N., and N. only, who seeks
to derive the meaning of the text; the others interpret its social
implications, the reasons why the text was created and presented
in that form.
N. has special knowledge of, or at least a special insight into,
language and recognizes its potential for developing meaning.
He comments, “Forgive me for resorting to etymologies again,
but therein, I’m convinced, lie the roots of coincidence” (89).
Words—their histories, their meanings, and their associations—
can be used to unlock philosophical meaning. Mallot comments:
“Somewhere between two similar words—for example, ‘card’
and ‘cord’—is the precise point of distinction between the two,
the electrical charge that gives both their individual potency;
somewhere within ‘cord’ is a chord, an entire realm of sound
and sense, silence and nonsense” (162). But Mackey does not use
words simply to move from one realm to another, from one plane
of thought to a different one. Words, their slippage and their
“discrepant engagement,” are, for N. and Mackey, the place
where truth is found—a theme particularly resonant with Sufi
exegesis of the Qur’an. In the Sutter Street graffito, N. sees the
ungrammatical as being innovatively grammatical. His meaning
or interpretation is generated by a “gnostic” reading, a reading
in light of the “knowledge” that N. has of language, a theme that
O’Leary has discussed (533–34).
While Mackey’s use of language can represent loss, particu-
larly for the reader, who discovers that words have lost their
ordinary meanings, words can also be the confluence of mean-
ing. For N., etymology signifies “coincidence”—of being in the
same place at the same time—or what Mackey has described as
nonsonance, a definition that itself incorporates nonce, nonsense,
and resonance (Finkelstein 198–99). In card/cord/chord, assent/
ascent/accent (Bedouin 25), pennies/Penny’s (Djbot Baghostus’s
 B U R G E ⋅ 285

Run 39), Nazi/not see (177), and bell/belle (Atet A.D. 6), the
homophones or orthographic similarities represent a coincidence
wherein ideas can be associated, paralleling the cross-cultural
exchange of wider philosophical principles and experiences. In
Bedouin Hornbook, N. refers to the fact that “band” has “over-
tones” of “bond” (89); “bond” is not the same as “band,” but
there is a resonance or overtone that encompasses both. In some
instances, the coincidence is manifested in a single entity. In Djbot
Baghostus’s Run, N.’s playing of the note C is a musical explo-
ration of a similar idea of the union of the many in the one (178–
79)—again, reminiscent of the Sufi focus on tawhid (“Oneness”)
and participation in divine unicity. By playing the C repeatedly,
N. not only encompasses the range of the sound world in playing
loudly, softly, and so on but also implies the potential that C has
to become: C, C minor, F, F minor, A minor, and all the other
derived keys and suspensions possible. C is the foundation for
a number of potential planes and infinite possibilities, the “coin-
cidence” of the many in the One.
N. does not use language to enter into a mystical experience
but to generate meaning. The concept of a text’s “secret” knowl-
edge is an important theme in mysticism generally, and specifi-
cally in Sufism, where part of the Sufi path is to gain “divine
knowledge” (ma‘rifa) about the world. As Reza Shah-Kazemi
explains, Sufis make a distinction between rational knowledge
(‘ilm) and divine knowledge (ma‘rifa), with the latter gained only
through meditation and experience of the divine. N.’s reaction
to words and his exploration of their semantic and phonic poten-
tial echoes ma‘rifa rather than ‘ilm; N. is not necessarily interested
in the actual etymology of a word but in generating meaning
through association—taking a word form on a journey and
deriving new meanings from other contexts. There is also the
sense that N. believes that words have an outer and an inner
meaning, an exoteric “normality” alongside an esoteric “reality,”
an idea that has much in common with Sufi exegesis of the
Qur’an and Ismaili ta’wil, with N. using deconstruction to under-
stand, or achieve gnosis about, his own experiences of world and
word.
 286 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

Four Dreams
Each of the four main dream sequences in Bedouin Hornbook (7;
20–21; 64; and 159–160) plays a part in the formation of N.’s
music and in his philosophical musings. In Jewish, Christian,
and Islamic literature (but beyond as well), the veracity of a
vision is often marked by certain motifs, such as the presence of
angels or the Throne of God. Ithamar Gruenwald argues that the
witnessing of unusual events and creatures, and of the unex-
pected and impossible, is the way a reader knows that the vision-
ary has moved to a different plane (31). As such, dreams are a
key component of prophetic and mystical experiences of the
divine, as dreams were believed to act, in certain circumstances,
as windows into the divine world and as a place where human-
divine interaction could occur. The interpretation of dreams is
an ability given to prophets, such as Joseph and Daniel, as a sign
of their prophetic office. Among Sufis, dreams, namely those of
the Prophet Muhammad, were accepted modes of prophetic rev-
elation. The dream sequences in Bedouin Hornbook echo this pro-
phetic typology.
Each of the dream sequences is relatively short, usually only
one paragraph. Although some of the dreams focus on music,
the main theme of the dreams is the notion of otherness and
distortion. In the opening dream sequence (7), N. intends to play
John Coltrane’s (or Archie Shepp’s) version of “Naima,” but
“Cousin Mary” is what he actually plays, and the bass clarinet
looks more like a plumbing fixture.5 In the dream about his
brother, N. comments that the action “took place in an area
between two buildings, though a sense was maintained of it also
taking place inside” (20). This sense of otherness is made explicit
when N. states, “But those words, if they belonged to anyone,
belonged to someone else” (20). This unnatural state is also seen
in N.’s recurring dream about a dog and a ladder: “I find myself

5. It is unclear in the text whether N. initially wished to imitate Coltrane’s original

version on Giant Steps or Shepp’s version on Four for Trane; either reading shows a dis-
junction between intention and action. Mackey explains in Paracritical Hinge that this was
an actual dream he had, in which he associated the playing of the bass clarinet with Eric
Dolphy, “Naima” with Coltrane, and “Cousin Mary” with Shepp (212).
 B U R G E ⋅ 287

in the dark, facing a ladder at whose foot a dog sits. The darkness
notwithstanding, the dog and the ladder are both easy to see,
each as though it were lit by an intrinsic light” (159). N. also
picks up on “falseness” and “otherness” in the dream about
another musician, Braxton. In the dream, Braxton drives past N.
and says of himself, in the third person: “That Braxton’s real
slick. . . . Can’t trust him. Unreal to the bone. Your basic trickster.
A little bit false” (64). It is not surprising that dreams should
describe aspects of otherness or surreality; dreams inhabit a
world in which normal physical rules do not apply, representing
a journey into a metaphysical realm.
Surreality and a sense of otherness are the main features of the
dream sequences, but what is the function of this feeling of “oth-
erness”? Some commentators, including Mallot and Devin John-
ston, have suggested that the “phantom limb” (7) is at the heart
of the novel; it is a theme that has been analyzed in detail, and
one that Mackey has discussed with O’Leary (38). But what is
the phantom limb? Is it something that was once possessed but
then lost? Is it a memory or a remembrance of something lost?
The dream music haunts N. “like a phantom limb” (7). N. says
of the touch of his brother that he feels in another of his dreams:
“Was the brotherly arm I felt a phantom limb? (And, even if not,
how much does ‘limb’ have to do with ‘liminal’?)” (22). Later, N.
writes that he has come across the term “phantom objectivity,”
on which he comments, “It refers to a situation, if I’ve got it right,
where we find ourselves haunted by what we ourselves initiate”
(88). The phantom limb is related to haunting, to a remembrance
of something past, but it is not something that is necessarily lost.
Nor is the phantom limb of the supramundane world, as it is not
something felt in a dream but a feeling of absence in the mundane,
marking a point of separation, just as an amputee is physically
separated from the limb. But from what is N. separated?
Dreams are not the same as a mystical experience, but they
do, nevertheless, have mystical significance: moments in the
“unreal” lead to moments of realization in the “real” world. Such
dreams and ventures into the supramundane show N.’s capacity
to experience and commune with otherworldliness. Mallot com-
ments on this notion of separation between worlds: “That some-
 288 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

thing has been severed, importantly, does not mean that it

remains forever inaccessible, but that it becomes another absent
layer in the palimpsest of our existence, a phantom limb or lamb
or iamb that replaces the real arm or body or word we knew
before” (137). Mallot is thinking in wider, more general terms,
but such a statement is applicable to N. himself. If Bedouin Horn-
book is read with mysticism in mind, the separate planes of the
palimpsest are not disconnected from reality; they are part of it,
because the phantom limb is manifested in the worldly sphere,
as a response to an experience in the supramundane. N. expe-
riences a felt absence—not an absence of the dream, or of the
venture into the supramundane itself, but of some knowledge
that is acquired there. The importance of music is what haunts
N., and the touch of his brother acts as a reminder of him; both
experiences are in the mundane, a subsequent realization
inspired by the dream itself.
In religious thought, dreams are vehicles of revelation or for
the imparting of knowledge. They are ventures toward the
supramundane, into a liminal space, without the visionary enter-
ing fully into it. Despite not becoming part of the supramundane,
the dreamer still receives knowledge, or gnosis (ma‘rifa). In all of
the dreams that N. has, he learns something about himself or
about his philosophy. While there is a sense that such knowledge
is “dangerous,” that it can “haunt,” in most religions, any such
journey or knowledge has an element of risk.

A Journey into the Supramundane

Thus far, we have seen that there are a number of elements in
Bedouin Hornbook that have a resonance with some Sufi concepts,
practices, and articulations of mysticism. However, none of these
elements shows an articulation of a definite mystical experience.
The dreams, which some may consider mystical, are not really
the same thing: a dream is an experience of the supramundane
but not a union with it. The concerts, particularly the concert
with the Crossroads Choir, are the moments in which N. achieves
mystic ecstasy and union in the supramundane. The Crossroads
 B U R G E ⋅ 289

Choir concert provides the fullest account of a mystical experi-

ence in Bedouin Hornbook, although the other concerts, both in
Bedouin Hornbook and in the other volumes of From a Broken Bot-
tle, have similar motifs.
Before we examine the account of the concert (109–24) in
detail, I would like to highlight the prevalence of religious
imagery and language throughout it. There are references to bap-
tism (110), a cathedral and church (112), the Upanishads (113), “a
capella” (114), parable (117), “liturgical ambush” (117), “first and
final things” (117), “body and soul” (119), prayer (119), bride and
wedding (120), koan (121), sacrament (121), crib and crypt (122),
the seven days of Creation (123), the eighth day (123), the Dogon
ancestor Lébé (123), and “cabalistic light” (124). Added to this
are many phrases that are more ambiguous, where the reader
can make other connections between the text and religious ideas:
for example, can the reference to Eric Dolphy (121) be related to
the Oracle of Delphi? Other words, like “pneumatic” and
“antiphonal” (113), although not strictly Christian, have Chris-
tian undertones of the Holy Spirit (the pneuma) and of church
antiphonal singing. The tune that the Crossroads Choir plays,
“Head Like A Horse’s, Heart Like A Mule’s,” alludes to vodoun
possession (113), showing the influence broadening out of the
Judeo-Christian tradition. As we have already seen, Finkelstein
has noted other mystical influences, especially shamanism, on
Mackey’s works. The name “Crossroads Choir” itself has clear
links to both the meeting place of two worlds—a “crossing”—
and an “angelic” choir, marking a moment where asymptosy is
suspended and union is gained. In folklore, as Martin Puhvel
argues, the idea of the crossroads also has an element of danger,
of associations with encounters with the Devil rather than with
the Divine. In Mackey’s commentary on Robert Duncan, this ten-
sion between the benefits and dangers inherent in a mystical
experience is made apparent:
The age-old sense of inspiration as an inspiriting, an invasion of a human
vessel by a non-human daimon or spirit, carries the danger of a loss of
touch with human realities and feelings. Taken seriously, the notion com-
plicates and unsettles what we mean by “human,” since, if we are subject
 290 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

to such invasions, our susceptibility has to be a factor of what being

human means.
(Paracritical Hinge 83)

The Crossroads Choir, then, could present either a divine or a

satanic encounter. N.’s mystical experience is not, as Paul Naylor
has argued, an encounter with a personified deity but with one
more abstract, a sense of being at one with humanity and with
the self (79). Naylor’s wish to dissociate Bedouin Hornbook’s mys-
ticism from a Judeo-Christian framework (79–80) is made prob-
lematic by this concert, as Mackey appears to be drawing explic-
itly on religious, particularly Christian, language and imagery.
A number of different elements in the concert can be seen to have
some connection to mystical experiences in Judaism, Christian-
ity, and Islam. In Islam, Sufis modeled their own spiritual ascent
on the ascent of Muhammad to heaven, the mi‘raj.
The final words of the previous letter set up and prefigure the
dramatic events that follow. The letter ends with the words “Let
us sing” (108), and sing he does. The letter of 6.XII.80 presents a
detailed account of what happened at the concert. N. undergoes
a series of steps before he manages to taste spiritual enlighten-
ment, with an implication that it was necessary for N. to go
through each stage in that particular order, as each stage informs
the experience of the next.
Initiation and vocation mark the beginning of N.’s involvement
in the concert, as well as the first stage, or in Sufi terms, maqam,
on the path (tariqa) to gnosis. N. begins by seeking out the Cross-
roads Choir, searching for a mystical reality. He says: “I spent
several weeks asking around regarding their whereabouts, only
to be told again and again that they’d ‘gone underground.’ No
one I talked to was willing to discuss it any further than that”
(109). N.’s inquisitiveness finally gets a response, but the mes-
sage is secretive, telling N. that he “should go alone, on foot and
carrying the horn of [his] choice.” Once at the rendezvous, nota-
bly a crossroads, N. blindfolds himself, is collected, bundled into
a vehicle, and given a strange, unknown substance to drink (109–
10). In the ascent literatures, Muslim and Judeo-Christian, the
prophet or visionary begins the process of ascension unexpect-
 B U R G E ⋅ 291

edly (Colby 196), in much the same way as N. receives a call

from a member of the choir out of the blue. Secrecy, although a
feature of Muslim and Judeo-Christian ascents, has more in com-
mon with Gnostic and Hermetic texts. The blindfolding and the
secrecy could indicate a tabula rasa: N.’s senses are wiped clean,
and when the blindfold is removed, he sees with new eyes. This
rite is reminiscent of the notion that the Prophet Muhammad
needed to be purified before ascending to heaven, which is done,
famously, through the purification of his heart, a motif which,
Brooke Olson Vuckovic argues, emphasizes “that God and his
agents prepared Muhammad adequately to undergo the journey
he is about to take” (22).
In the mi‘raj literature, Muhammad is given a test before (or
sometimes after) his ascent in which he is presented with a choice
of drinks, milk or wine (Vuckovic 26). When appearing before
the ascent itself, this test does two things: it shows that Muham-
mad is suitable, capable, and worthy of the ascent, and it pre-
pares him for the events and creatures that he is about to encoun-
ter. N. is not presented with a test, but the odorless liquid that
he is forced to take plays a similarly purificatory role, and
through the “ordeals” of his initiation, which echo those of secret
societies, N. proves his suitability to the Crossroads Choir. N.
describes the liquid as inducing “a watery submission to the ele-
ments at large in which every wrinkle of wind, however slight,
fluttered like wings or splashed like a swimmer’s limbs” (110).
Here, drinking the liquid is associated at once with a feeling of
flight, of ascent and baptism, in which one is symbolically
“raised” from the dead (Rom. 6:4). The liquid—highly similar in
both form and effect to PCP/“angel dust”—is also very likely
responsible for N.’s change in sense perception, drug-induced,
spiritual, or both. Th. Emil Homerin illustrates in his study of
the Sufi Ibn al-Farid that many mystics drew inspiration from
drunkenness to explain the ecstasy of divine union. Indeed,
scholars such as G. Ray Jordan have made links between reli-
gious visions and secular, drug-induced visions, of which
Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception is the most famous. The
vocation and initiation sequence at the start of the Crossroads
 292 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

Choir concert does not have direct parallels with Islamic and
Judeo-Christian ascent narratives, but the sequence does appear
to echo certain motifs found in these literatures.
Admittance to the supramundane is the next stage in N.’s mystic
experience. In the Muslim narratives of ascent, as in Judeo-Chris-
tian ones, the visionary is taken on a tour of Heaven by his guide.
The guide informs the Prophet about what he is seeing and
explains its meaning. N. is guided physically (111) but also has
his interpretations of events confirmed by others. Later in the
concert, N. says, “This might also explain, I suggested at once,
the vicarious octaves he’d apparently added to the tenor’s range,
the solo’s ‘phantom’ reach. ‘Precisely,’ he whispered in agree-
ment, nodding his head, as we both turned our attention back
to the music” (118). The need for an interpreting angel is impor-
tant, as often the visionary does not understand what he is see-
ing. The same is found in N.’s reaction to the concert room (111–
12), which has an “indeterminate character” and refuses “to
settle into any solid, describable ‘take.’” The audience is similarly
vague: “the crowd was faceless and of a variable aspect all its
own” (112). The band members, too, are disfigured, with faces
that “appeared to suffer from a surplus or an overcharge of fea-
tures,” revealing a “true” or supramundane form:
Fold upon fold, line upon line and wrinkle upon wrinkle gathered, one
moment suggesting the Assyrian god Humbaba, whose face was built of
intestines, the next the Aztec raingod Tlaloc, whose face consisted of two
intertwining snakes. The band, which could only have been the Cross-
roads Choir, partook of an elastic, variable aspect equal to if not greater
than that of the audience and the structure (whatever and wherever it
was) in which we were gathered.
(112)

N.’s fascination with the deconstruction of words, their mallea-

bility and uncertainty, is now made manifest in the experience
of the supramundane. Likewise, the drainpipe horn played by
N. in the opening dream sequence foreshadows a more complex
and strengthened “deconstruction.” Mackey employs much reli-
gious imagery, some Christian but also drawn from Aztec and
Assyrian religion. Both of the gods described have a terrifying
form; terrifying images of divine beings are likewise common in
 B U R G E ⋅ 293

the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. The imagery of the

band members having “a surplus or an overcharge of features”
has intriguing similarities with some angels found in Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic literature, particularly the four-faced cher-
ubim and the Islamic “Bearers of the Throne.”6 Even the night-
club’s failure to remain static and comprehensible has associa-
tions with visions of heaven and/or the temple seen by prophets
and mystics in the monotheistic traditions. All of these act as
markers and signs that N. has entered the supramundane world.
The nightclub is no longer simply a nightclub but something
else, something more abstract, changing, and impossible.
N.’s confusion and incomprehension when he enters this
supramundane world is a common feature of Judeo-Christian
and Islamic mystical ascents. What the visionary sees is often
confusing. That at first N. cannot see the faces of the crowd
shows his disconnectedness with the world of the supramun-
dane; as he gains more experience, he is able to see faces and
understand his surroundings (122).
Witnessing a celestial choir is a common motif in both Judeo-
Christian and Islamic narratives of ascent. The celestial choir has
a number of functions within the tradition, two of which have
some bearing on Bedouin Hornbook. The first is that the angels
illustrate, for the visionary, the archetypal form of worship. The
second is that angels, and especially the celestial choir, can be
used as a vehicle of revelation. N.’s mystical experience may not
be one of the divine world, but as the imagery already encoun-
tered indicates, he is in a supramundane space. The music of the
band plays a similar role in acting as an archetypal music, with
the musicians, too, imparting a form of revelation to N.
That the band plays a role in defining music, or at least per-
forms a superior music, is encountered early on in the concert:
the music is definitive. N. believes that the size of the band is vast:
“Their entrance threatened to go on forever—a slow, numberless
stampede, as it were, of musician after hyperbolic musician

6. In the Bible, the cherubim have the faces of a man, a lion, an eagle, and either a bull
or a cherub (cf. Ezek. 10:14 and Rev. 4:7). The Islamic hamlat al-‘arsh (“Bearers of the
Throne”) have similar features (Burge 52–59).
 294 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

which made me wonder whether the stage could hold them all”
(112–13). N. then says of the band that “[i]t seemed they were
every band I’d ever heard or even dreamt I’d heard all rolled
into one” (113). For N., at that moment, the band is perfection,
the archetype, the prototype, the consummation of all that is
good about music. The music that the band plays does not dis-
appoint. He describes the music as transcending the self: “Such
a sense of myself I’d nourished only in private (or what I thought
was private), unassailable, or so I thought, within the vascular
walls of a fool’s paradise” (113). He says of an exchange between
the flutist and the rest of the band, “it was the unobstructed body
of love their exchange addressed, a pneumatic equation whose
antiphonal factors each exacted an abrupt, unlikely gift of itself”
(114). The themes of revelation and love are important in mys-
tical experiences of the divine. In the Judeo-Christian and Mus-
lim traditions, God embodies love, and part of the aim of the
mystical experience is to be immersed in this love. The concept
and metaphor of love is particularly strong in Sufism; poets such
as Ibn al-Farid used love poetry to describe their search for and
union with God.
The most extreme reaction to the music is experienced not by
N. but by someone else in the crowd:
Off to my right I saw one man break two glasses on the edge of his table,
set them up again and bring the palms of his hands down on their jagged
rims. He then held his hands up for everyone to see, moving toward the
stage to stand directly below the flutist, his bleeding hands up in the air
and the blood running down his arms—a token, he seemed to be sug-
gesting, of his appreciation.
(115)

The great detail with which N. describes this event shows simul-
taneously both comprehension and incomprehension. The actual
behavior of the man seems to confuse N.: he cannot understand
why the man acts as he does, yet N.’s own experience of the
music gives him insight into the man’s motivations. The man’s
behavior was in response to something the flutist said. Having
begun to lose faith in the flutist’s playing, N. is suddenly sur-
prised, commenting, “Just as I began to weary of a sloganizing
strain which had crept into the solo . . . , the flutist did something
 B U R G E ⋅ 295

that brought the crowd to its feet” (115). The flutist stops playing
and utters a word of revelation: “[H]e leaned forwards and whis-
pered across the lip-plate into the mike. ‘As for me,’ he muttered,
‘who am neither I nor not-I, I have strayed from myself and I
find no remedy but despair’” (115). The flutist implies a state of
self-annihilation (fana’), the emptying of the self necessary to be
filled with something greater. This emptying of the self is hinted
at earlier, when N. describes the flutist: “Slaptonguing the lip-
plate while fingering the keys, the flutist resorted to certain per-
cussive effects whose goal seemed to be to do away with them-
selves as such” (114). This doing away with the self is the goal
of the Islamic mystical path and a metaphor also found in Rumi’s
Mathnawi (Spiritual Verses 5). Not yet having himself attained the
state of self-annihilation, N. accepts the flutist’s words as a piece
of revelation that induces pain: the spiritual and mental experi-
ence manifests itself in the form of a sharp pain, as if glass has
embedded itself in his forehead (115).
The band plays on, seemingly in reaction to N.’s confused
state: “It was evidently a need I shared with others, for at that
moment the tenor player stepped forward as the band made a
quick transition into one of the most dangerous standards
around, ‘Body and Soul’” (116–17). The spiritual significance of
“body” and “soul” in religious imagery is well known, but it
does have particular importance in Sufism, where the greater
jihad (“struggle”) takes place within the body and soul, a theme
explored by many great Sufis, such as al-Ghazali in his Ihya ‘ulum
al-din (55–66). As the band’s rendition of “Body and Soul” devel-
ops, N. feels an increasing spirituality and focuses on the title:
“‘Body and soul,’ I muttered under my breath, taken aback by
the relevance of these words yet again, but the abrupt renewal
of such an apparently pristine relevance formed a lump in my
throat” (119). The crowd becomes frantic, fully involved in the
music, chanting again and again, “My house of cards had no
foundation” (118). When N. tries to join in, he says, “I opened
my mouth . . . but no sound came out” (119). N. is not yet ready
to become fully joined with the “other”; by not submitting him-
self to the audience, he retains his personal identity. N. has not
yet managed to reach the state of self-annihilation.
 296 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

Participation, self-annihilation, and ecstasy mark the climax of the

concert for N. His musical participation in the concert is marked
by a physical move from one plane to another, from the audience
onto the stage, and thus constitutes a final “ascent.” The process
is one of vocation, of being summoned, just as in the Bible proph-
ets like Isaiah receive their calling to draw closer to the Divine
(Isa. 6:8). N. says:
It took me no time at all to realize that I’d been summoned, that I was
now being given a chance to sit in. The opportunity both excited me and
gave me cause to be wary. . . . I saw myself as a “bride” by way of whose
wedding what had been confirmed was—how can I put it?—a vocation
for longing. It was nothing less than a calling brought about in such a
way that one nursed a sweet-tooth for complication.
(120)

There is an undeniably strong influence here of a Judeo-Chris-

tian, and by extension Muslim, context. The Sufi trope of beauty
and love reappears as N. begins to play (120). It takes N. a little
time to find his voice, beginning with “a sly breathy phrase”
which turns into a sigh: “The sigh was an ode, an elegy and a
confession all at once. I felt depleted and put upon” (121). The
sense of depletion marks the beginning of N.’s self-annihilation,
his self-emptying. He progresses through this state remembering
a lover and thus returning to the theme of love. In his interview
with O’Leary, Mackey describes the ‘udhri notion of the love-
death, especially the way in which the poet-lover dies because
of unrequited and lost love (36–37). Similarly, N. empties him-
self—and hence brings about a “death of self”—through a medi-
tation on love:
I embroidered the line with the tale of . . . a seven-day romance I had ages
ago with a woman I met halfway around the world. It was a whirlwind
affair, love at first sight, proposing impossibly wide horizons and laying
claim to only the most unlikely prospects. With painstaking patience I
sketched every detail of our initial encounter, thrown back upon that old-
est, ever available sacrament—rites of seduction.
(121)

N. voices his meditation in openly religious imagery. N. opens

himself and empties himself through this musical confession,
 B U R G E ⋅ 297

“sacrament” and “rites.” In Sufism, the mystic empties the self

so that it can be filled with an experience of the Divine, taking a
share in the Divine unicity. N., too, achieves a union, albeit not
one with the Divine. The union is pseudo-physical and sexual:
“I did what justice I could to the press of our bones and the snug,
thrusting fit of our flesh, the enduring, wicked sting of the carnal
rites whose plunge we took” (122). This union leads to the climax
and N. becoming fully integrated into the supramundane. It is
only after this mystical union that N. sees clearly: “Not only did
the audience come to their feet, as they had during the flute solo,
but their heads all of a sudden acquired features, welcome wrin-
kles and expressive lines they hadn’t had before” (122).
N. continues exploring and remains in this state (baqa’) for as
long as possible, using “every mystical consolation I could mus-
ter to keep from breaking down” (123), as his philosophical mus-
ings grow more profound. N. begins to contemplate Olivier Mes-
siaen’s notion of the “eighth day” as marking eternity,
completeness, and union, a concept to which Mackey refers in
his interview with Rowell (710). Messiaen, like Mackey, believed
in the power of music to define and explore theological consid-
erations, an idea now being developed in theology itself by theo-
logians such as Jeremy S. Begbie. As Anthony Pople explains in
his analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du temps: “Messiaen
was convinced that musicians were as well placed to investigate
the nature of time as were scientists or philosophers, saying that
‘Without musicians, time would be much less understood.’ He
saw his use of non-retrogradable rhythms and other devices as
somehow operating on time itself, revealing its nature” (13).
Mackey is less interested in exploring the concept of time
(although it does play a part) than in widening and exploring
space. It could be said that his cross-cultural project attempts to
transcend race and creed, placing ideas and experience in a uni-
versalist and pluralist context. N. meditates on the number eight,
relating it to music itself: “It occurred to me now, as though I’d
never seen it before, that the eighth note of every octave is a
return to the first, both end and beginning” (123). N. continues
to play and realizes the enormity of his experience. He con-
cludes, “I knew I’d come home to the heart” (124). The heart is
 298 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

a major theme in Sufism, for the mystic needs to purify the heart
to attain spiritual enlightenment, as Saeko Yazaki has recently
detailed. Mackey himself has commented on the idea of cardio-
gnosis, the realization of the self in the heart, in an interview with
Naylor (646). That N., having attained mystical enlightenment,
says that he has “come home to the heart” is highly resonant of
this Sufi theme.
N. opens his eyes and witnesses a woman burst a white bal-
loon on which is written, “Only One” (124). Thus the last thing
that N. sees at the concert, the last thought he thinks, refers to
partaking in the Oneness (tawhid) of God—the aim of mystical
experience. While N. does not share in any divine unicity, he has
reached a mystical state in which he feels “at one,” sharing in
humanity as a whole. As soon as the balloon bursts, the experi-
ence ends: N. returns to the mundane.
N.’s mystical experience with the Crossroads Choir exhibits all
of the standard “stations” (maqama) that a Sufi will typically
undergo during an experience of the divine. N. searches for the
choir in much the same way that a Sufi seeks the face of God.
He goes through the steps of initiation and rites of purification,
so that when he reaches the nightclub, he has a clean slate and
is ready for the experience. N. is confused by what he sees, a
signal that he is now in the world of the supramundane and
needs a guide. There is a time for N. to watch passively, as is
typical of ascent narratives, before he takes part in the “ritual”
itself. Finally, through the music and memories of love, N. is able
to reach a state of self-annihilation (fana’) and achieves a mystical
sense of oneness and union. He remains in this state (baqa’) a
time before returning to the mundane world, having received a
revelation of sorts.
Finkelstein, interpreting Mackey’s poetry in light of shaman-
ism, highlights certain themes and ideas that are central to sha-
manism, such as violence and wounding (187), shamanic jour-
neying into the supramundane (196), and spirit possession (191).
These themes are found in Bedouin Hornbook, and in the episode
with the Crossroads Choir, but they are not central concepts.
While Mackey may, indeed, draw on shamanism in his poetry,
the episode with the Crossroads Choir is replete with Islamic
 B U R G E ⋅ 299

imagery, and it is the Islamic influence that comes across more

strongly. Although the end result is not the same as in monothe-
istic ascent literature—there is no union with the divine—the
way in which N. undergoes his mystical experience is extremely
reminiscent of such ideas. Jewish and Christian narratives of
mystical ascent include similar motifs, but the use of music to
attain such a state suggests a strong Muslim influence. The Sufi
sama‘ (congregational singing of the dhikr) is extremely important
and does not really have a counterpart in the Jewish or Christian
mystical traditions. Thus N.’s use of music in his approach to
the experience has much more in common with Islamic mysti-
cism.

Bedouin Hornbook’s Musical and Mystical Journey

Reading Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook from the per-
spective of Sufism highlights certain themes concerning the mys-
tical element in the work. While N.’s mysticism is neither Judeo-
Christian nor Islamic as such, it is possible to see distinct
influences on the articulation of N.’s mystical experiences. A
number of themes in Bedouin Hornbook can be clarified through
an exploration of Sufi concepts. The idea of the shaykh-murid rela-
tionship between N. and the Angel of Dust can be used to
describe their complicated relationship. N.’s lexical deconstruc-
tion has parallels in Islamic mystical exegesis, wherein words in
the Qur’an are believed to have both exoteric and esoteric mean-
ings, and from which it is possible to derive new meanings and
to gain understanding (ma‘rifa). Mackey’s use of dreams illus-
trates the way in which N. interacts with the supramundane,
showing a different form of mysticism than that of the concerts,
where N. enters a truly mystical state. A Sufi reading of the
events that N. experiences at the Crossroads Choir concert
reveals the influence of ideas such as self-annihilation (fana’) and
“remaining” (baqa’), as well as the notions of divine and ecstatic
beauty and “drunken” Sufism.
Bedouin Hornbook is certainly not an “Islamic” work, nor is it
necessarily written with Islam in mind, but it does exhibit a
strong influence from Islamic mysticism, one which needs to be
 300 ⋅ C O N T E M P O R A R Y L I T E R A T U R E

acknowledged and explored in more detail. Indeed, it may be

possible that the study of contemporary poetry would benefit
more widely from a deeper understanding of how the notions
of spirituality and meaning are articulated in Islamic mysticism.
Mystics, as well as poets and authors writing in societies with a
long heritage of Sufism, seek to look beyond the text of scripture
(be it the Qur’an, the Bible, or any other sacred text) to reach a
deeper spiritual meaning and inner reality. In Bedouin Hornbook,
the Sufi influences inform the text as a whole, creating part of
the mystical collage that Mackey employs. The use of Muslim
ideas—one of a great many influences on the work, from Brazil-
ian culture, to Assyrian mythology, to ancient Egypt—is part of
Mackey’s syncretistic approach to (religious) experience and
ideas. For N., and for Mackey, experience, rather than the estab-
lishment of theoretical boundaries, is paramount. Music is a
means to transcend the established boundaries of religion and
culture; but it is also a means to move between the mundane and
the supramundane—to transcend givens spiritually as well as
culturally. N.’s music-based mysticism leads him on a spiritual
journey, on which he develops both his ideas about music and
his philosophy, which N. then shares with the Angel of Dust,
and which Mackey shares with his reader.
Institute of Ismaili Studies
London, England

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