The Frumious Bandersnatch

the guys are in tight jeans and tank tops and the girls are in halter tops and hip huggers that show their bellybuttons. You use the club’s own strobe lighting except for your star, who’s performing in their midst and needs special lighting to show her own bellybutton or however much else of herself you’d like her to show,” he said, and turned his steely blue-eyed gaze full force on the black girl, who licked chocolate pate from her fork, and smiled at him. “You’ve got to remember,” he said directly to her, “that there’s absolutely nowhere your artist can go after she’s stark naked.”

Everyone laughed. The man from London had a sort of horsy laugh. The man from Paris sounded like he was choking on a Gauloise. Higgins figured he was both amusing and instructing these two stereotypes. Encouraged, he continued with his thesis, which he would try to get published inThe New Yorker magazine one day.

“A little more expensive is what I call your ‘Back to the Hood’ video. This only works with black or Latino artists,” he said, and winked at the black girl, “since your white performers don’t come fum no hood, sistuh,” and winked again. The black girl winked back. Higgins figured he was home free. “This is a video you shoot outdoors, with your male or female artist roaming the old neighborhood and feeling sentimental about it. You see shots of old black guys playing cards on an upturned garbage can, you see shots of little girls jumping rope and teenage dudes shooting baskets in the school yard, you see shots of what look like dope buys going down, this is like a documentary that says, ‘Look where I came from, boys and girls, and now I’m a big rock star, ain’t that something?’ And your artist is roaming through all this like a hidden camera, with a soulful look on her face, singing her little heart out while she remembers what it was like to be a kid in this hood.”

The black girl was nodding dreamily now, remembering what it was like to be a kid in the shitty hood where she herself was born, but look at her tonight, man, here on a million-dollar yacht, wearing chains and a diamond and flirting with a veep from a big-time label, oh lordy!

“The song doesn’t have to have anything at all to do with the hood or memories of the hood. The song can have a lyric any twelve-year-old can remember in six seconds flat, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die,’ something like that, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,’ like that. Nothing at all to do with growing up poor, the growing-up-poor is only the sub-plot. What the video does is tell all those kids out there who bought the album that here in this America—or for that matter any ofyour countries, too, my friends—anywhere in the entire freeworld, for that matter, you can grow up to be a diva who will love someone till the day she die-ai-ai-s.”

Higgins smiled. They all smiled with him.

The black girl wasn’t too sure Higgins wasn’t dissing the sort of hood she grew up in, but she smiled, too, what the hell, and grabbed a glass of white wine from a waiter passing a tray.

“Your next cheapest video is what I call ‘Smoke and Mirrors,’ it’s all bullshit flashing lights and blinking neon. Looks like a million bucks, but doesn’t cost a nickel. Well, it costs a lot more than the other three, but that’s only in the construction. The shooting is cheap. Just your set and your artists on the set. This is the kind of set you use when your song is about absolutely nothing. In fact, not anybody out there can understand the words to the song. Nobody. Not a single living soul. I’m not talking rap. You can usually understand the words in a rap song. I’m talking about a song that has lyrics nobody on earth can understand, no matter how often you listen to the song. This is a song that kids keep listening to over and over again, trying to dope out what the hell the lyrics mean. This is a song that’s usually a big hit overseas, because you don’t have to understand it in Germany or Italy, it’s the same as if you’re hearing it in America, where nobody can understand it, either, because it’s designed to be unintelligible. Are you beginning to get my drift?”

The guy from London was beginning to get Higgins’s drift. Higgins was leading up to talking about “Bandersnatch.” The man from London nodded sagely, like a member of Parliament who’d just been advised that his Prime Minister had the goods on Osama bin Laden.

“Your next to the most expensive video is your ‘Story’ video. This can be a video that actuallyfollows the story of the lyrics in any given song, illustrating the song, so to speak, putting it into pictures for the twelve-year-olds out there, or it can be a video that tells a story entirelydifferent from the one the lyrics are telling. Usually, the Story video is directed by some guy who has dreams of doing a feature film for Miramax. He is more interested in thevideo itself than he is in thesong the video is supposed to be selling. In many respects, it’s like your ‘Back to the Hood’ video. Your artist can be singing, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,’ and the picture on the screen will be showing a car crashing through the guard rail on the Calm’s Point Bridge and hurtling to the dark swirling mysterious waters below. The ‘Story’ video is full of artsy-fartsy shots and dissolves and fades you learn in Directing 101 in film school. There are women with horns and pointy red breasts…”

Higgins glanced at the black girl again.

“…or guys who suddenly sprout huge wings and fly off into a sky torn apart by thunder clouds. You’re sometimes watching two or three stories at the same time, either having to do with the song, or having nothing at all to do with it. The idea is to make the video look like a hi-tech movie so that the kids will run out to buy the album, thinking maybe it, too, gee whiz, is like a high-tech movie. Razzle-dazzle. It’s all razzle-dazzle, thank you, Kander and Ebb. Which brings me to the most expensive video of all, and that is the ‘Production Number’ video, and that is what the ‘Bandersnatch’ video is.”

Finalmente,the guy from Milan thought.

“Leave me dispense with generalities,” Higgins said, “and invite you directly into my boudoir,” and here his gaze brushed the black girl’s long and shiny legs, and her pert and perky tits, and then her overblown lips and her loam-colored eyes, asking his question to those eyes, asking it with a small inquisitive lifting of his brows, and getting his answer with a slight imperceptible nod, Yes, the girl in the chains was saying, oh yes, yes, yes.

“ ‘Bandersnatch,’ ” Higgins said, “although I feel certain Lewis Carroll didn’t intend it this way, is the story of an attempted rape, the story of a thwarted rape, the story of a victim triumphant. Most importantly, it is infact a story—agenuine story and not one of those invented film-school stories that have nothing to do with the song they’re selling. ‘Bandersnatch’ is the story of a girl who is warned of the beast out there on those mean streets, but who goes out to find that beast, anyway, and to slay it, my friends, to kill it dead, to emerge victorious, ‘O Frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!’ Yes, you’re right if you’re thinking this is the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ told in nonsense syllables that captivate and mystify, part hard driving rock, part rap, so that we go after and deliver both audiences. You may well ask—especially our friend from Britain here, who may be more familiar with the poem than some of you others…”

“I’m familiar with the poem,” the black girl said.

Higgins looked at her.

“In fact, I know it by heart,” she said.

“Then you may be wondering how…”

“I am indeed wondering,” she said.

“…how theboy in the poem…”

“ ‘Beware the Jabberwock, myson, ’ ” she said, stressing the word.

“Exactly,” Higgins said.

“ ‘Come to my arms, my beamishboy, ’ ” the man from London said.

“Exactly right,” Higgins said. “How does this boy become a girl, become a rape victim, become in fact Tamar Valparaiso?”

“My magazine is wondering the same thing,” the black girl said.

“Which magazine is that?” Higgins asked.

“Rolling Stone.”

Ooops, Higgins thought.

SHE HAD CUTher hair short for the video.

It was growing back now, but if the album was a hit and Tamar had to go on tour with it, she’d have it trimmed back to the length it was two months ago, when they shot the video at what used to be a bakery but what was now the Sands Spit Studios across the River Dix, which in fact they’d passed not half an hour ago. TheRiver Princess had already come around the tip of the island and was now heading