Whip It Good: The “Cruel-Joy” of Sex With Percy Grainger

a taste of our own medicine, our shitty medicine. What's the opposite of medicine poison? I guess, Yeah, in Australia. Here comes the poison. Australia high on my list to visit, am I own? I mean, dream trip if I really had all the time in the world, Yeah, go to Japan and then Australia. Sure, vice versa, because you're much closer to one from the other, you know what I mean. I've long said that, I might have even said this

on this show. But if and when I can never get seriously into philanthropy, my goal would be getting people travel, you know, helping people who don't have the means because travel is very expensive, even if you do it cheaply, to just travel freely, and I just think that's such an important part of living, of the human experience, and I think it makes everybody better people. So that's to me, that's how I would contribute to the world. I think

that's a great idea. Everybody should travel. I'll tell you what I'm jealous about with in terms of Australians is that they get so much time off to travel from their work. I remember when I worked at the Highland Bakery, we would often get people in there from Australia who are like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm on my three months paid vacation from work, right, so I'm traveling, you know, all of America. You know there would be going to so many amazing places in a few months. How can

you tell me again what they said? Oh, they said, oh you know I'm on for Manchester. Is that what I'm doing? Well, it's definitely not what I was doing just then. I don't know what what's it down? Like, Let's see, they'd say, crikey, I'm on me from London. I really poor doing this, poor la. Neither of us are nailing. It's okay, give me a I don't know, I need, I need a phrase to get me into crikey. That's a big spider, a big spider. Time for me

to eat some vegemite. The vegemite scares the spider off. That scares the spider. You're too soft. Yeah, I get a little graph kangaroo chasing you down with a big knife. And you turn around and you say, oh, that's not a knife. That's oh god, that is a knife. Who gave this kangaroo such a big note? You know, Australia in the air back? How's that? On the amback? What? I don't know. I feel like you're circling Australia. Find Yeah, kind of like in a boat off the shore somewhere

quite ever landing there. Now you're stuck at sea, crack, can't land. Well, let's land it on our subject. And so we've now that we've changed. You know, Australia is like number three or four in our countries that listen to us. So no, I'm sorry, we just scared off at least a quarter of our audience. So sorry for those of you still with us. Apologies. This subject was suggested by Sarah at Huzza Underscore Sarah on Instagram. Thank

you Sarah, this is good huzza. And yeah, like you said, we haven't done like a kinky one in a while, so I was excited to get into this um. The Australian musician Percy Aldridge Granger. This guy was an internationally known composer and conductor. He was super eccentric. He invented like weird instruments and he made his own clothes. He was pretty problematic in that he felt Nordic white people were far superior to Jewish people in every way. Jeez boom,

why are we talking about this guy? Well, because what he's most remembered for is a parcel marked private matters that he instructed should be opened ten years after his death. But inside were some of Percy's conductor's batons, but they were not being used for conducting. Oh so let's tell you all about this kinky composer and his love for what he called cruel joy and what we call bdsm. Oh yeah, let's go. Hey their French come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no

matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about pridiculous Relationships. A lover might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons ada concrete. But if there's a story. The second Clinch Ridiculous Roles, a production of iHeartRadio. Percy Aldridge Granger was born near Melbourne in Australia. His dad, John

was an architect. He's known mostly for bridges, including the Prince's Bridge in Melbourne, but he was also a heavy drinker and womanizer, and after he married Percy's mother, Rose, she found out that he had another child in England that she didn't know nothing about who. Even worse, after Percy was born in eighteen eighty two, she discovered that she had contracted syphilis from her promiscuous husband. That is infuriating.

I feel like I would have a murderous rage right especially because there's no treatment at this time, so that's just a death sentence like he gave. But even though she found out all this crazy shit about him, they still stayed together until eighteen ninety. But after they split up, Rose was Percy's main parent. She handled pretty much everything to do with his life. She's kind of a helicopter mom. She even did his schooling. She educated him at home.

She taught him like music and literature, and then she had tutors handling languages, art and drama. He started playing piano at the age of ten, and by the time he was twelve he was playing concerts where reviewers called him quote the flextenhad phenomenon, who plays like a mesta. How is that? I think it's a little keywee. But it was nice. Well, all right, maybe my Australians are originally from New Zealand. They've moved just a little laid back.

They just led back. Yeah, so Percy is doing great. People are like, oh my god, kids amazing. So Rose Granger his mother decided Percy is good enough to be studying in Europe, so they moved to Frankfurt, Germany in eighteen ninety five. Now, when Frankfurt, Percy continued to study piano, and he also started showing an interest in preserving folk music. It kind of reminds me of Robert Burns or some of these other poets who would take you old folk

tunes or folk poems or whatever and set them to music. Yeah, and he started doing this. He would set poetry to music, including poems by Rodyard Kipling and our old friend friend of the show Walt Whitman. Yes, Percy was playing concerts and teaching and everyone was calling him a prodigy. So by nineteen oh one he and his mother Rose decided to move to England. Now Percy was a damn good pianist,

nobody could deny that. But it did not hurt that he was also pretty handsome and very charming, so with the elite of London immediately took a fancy to him, and he was soon playing concerts in private homes. Oh darling, won't you come to my musical suare tomorrow night? I have Percy Grainger all the way from Australia, Percy Grangel, the Thunder from down Under, the original Thunder from down

Under Percy Granges. He was even introduced to Queen Alexandra by a socialite named Lilith Lowry, and Lilith also has the distinction of being the first woman that Percy had sex with. She was twenty years older than him, and she apparently frequently traded her patronage for sex. Percy called it quote a love serve job, and he recalled his first sexual experience like this quote. I thought I was about to die if I remember, correctly, I only experienced

fear of death. I don't think that joy entered into it. My god, what a description, What a way to be introduced to sex. He's like some lady's sex slave so that she will introduce him to wealthy patrons. I mean, and he's like, I'm not even having fun. So how was it when you got with that older woman last night? Well, I only thought of my own imminent demise. I saw an open gray before mate, and it was twenty magical minutes of staring into the face of the grim specter

of death. I looked into the abyss, and Lilith looked back. Wow. Well, you know your first time is never the best, right, I guess that. I mean, it would be terrible if it was all downhill from there. That's true. It should. It should ramp up and enjoyment and stuff as you get better. Right, I didn't get to know yourself. The only time he thought that he was gonna die during sex was the first time. A side note crossover alert.

It's very likely that Percy Granger saw Williams and Walker's musical in Dahomey in London in nineteen o three, because he published his own version in nineteen o nine. And if you remember the Williams and Walker episode that they were such cool people. Yeah, so cool. They were like these amazing vaudeville performers, and they were black vaudeville performers, so they had to deal with a bunch of stupid racism.

But they were so good that their plays were some of the first black musicals to be performed overseas, some of the first scores to be ever published. Stuff like that. They were just amazing. Please listen, I love all three of them. It's Bert Williams, George Walker, and his wife Aida Walker. Amazing. But back to Percy Grainger. So he continued performing music all over the world for the next

few years. He became more and more famous. He was rubbing shoulders with some of the great names in music like Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy and Percy's favorite, the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. And he also collected and transcribed more than three hundred pieces of folk music from all over England. He even started incorporating Mayori and Polynesian songs

into his tours. Okay, I know, I don't know if that's appropriative or if it's like cool that he was trying to highlight their culture in a more interesting way. What we'll get into about his noble racism. I kind of feel like it's probably he was just like this is mine now, I know, right, I could totally see it.

But finally, in nineteen eleven, Percy felt confident enough to start publishing his own music, and his series of concerts playing only his own compositions were huge successes, which wasn't always the case. You know, some people were like, get back to back, you know what I mean. Yeah, And his compositions could be kind of crazy. For example, one of his pieces from nineteen thirteens called the Warriors, and it was played with thirty quote exceptionally strong and vigorous

pianists on nineteen pianos. I've heard Australians have exceptionally strong and vigorous pianists. That's what they say. The pianists down there amazing. He was also still teaching, and Percy began dating one of his students named Karen Holton. I know he did remain close with her her whole life. If they have a bunch of letters that they exchanged throughout their the next many years okay. And then another student turned romantic interest was Margot Harrison, who Percy got engaged

to in nineteen thirteen. But according to John Bird's biography Percy Grainger, the relationship fell apart partly due to Percy's mother, Rose's over possessiveness. M Okay, so so far, We've got a guy who is appropriating minority culturist music, including Mayorian Polynesian songs and Williams Walkers into homie. Okay, and also he's dating his students. So far, so good, A plus great,

all right, I'm gonna do it so good now. His mother, Rose's over possessiveness might be part of the reason why rumors persisted that the two of them had an inappropriately close relationship. In fact, a lot of people at the

time were whispering that it was incestuous. James J. Conway writes in his article A Percy Granger Glossary that there are also some pieces of writing by Percy that show how quote mother fixated he is, including pieces with titles like arguments with beloved Mother, mother's worship of bodily beauty, mother's willfulness, recklessness, fearlessness, bossiness, violence, if opposed tendency to burn food when cooking. Vehemence. What an incredible title. I mean,

it's descriptive. He really was, like, I'm just going to write all her faults down, say about mother today, and I'm going to put it into my music. And by music, I mean the title of my music. Conway writes that these quote speak of an obsession of Norman Bates proportions. Now, that's not clear how much Percy or Rose were privy to these rumors and whisperings, since they were particularly rude and scandalous. You know, it's not likely that anyone went up and told them about it in the middle of

a party, right, very weird thing, knew. But most scholars agree that there is no evidence to support these claims. But you kind of can start to get where people are coming from. According to Stephanie S. Lake's article fifty Shades of Percy Granger on Kill Your Darlings dot Com, Percy himself described their relationship as quote an intense, spirtual love and devotion and quote the only truly passionate love

affair of his life. Cut Common Magazine says that they even shared a bed until he was thirty six years old. That's too long. I'm trying to imagine his thirty seventh birthday and he's like, mother, I think it's time for me to get me own bed. This year for my birthday, I locked my own room. I don't know why he's British, but he he lived in London for a while. She's like, well, boy, he's all grown up, all right, Percy of course, of course, Well that's the first bed of boy gets after he

stopped sleeping with his parents. A little race car incentive to sleep by himself will add that. Classic FM says that Rose never sexually touched Percy because she had syphilis, right, Like she didn't want to pass it on the which is a great reason, but also like not the best reason. Like I feel like there's other reasons that you don't sexually encounter your son. I feel like the syphilis is irrelevant. He's your son. Yeah, that's like the number one reason

not to fuck him. That that speculation station. We don't know that that is the main reason, but no, obviously I think that's everyone's speculation station, right because obviously neither of them ever sat and wrote it out whether they did or not. Right, Well, anyway, in September of nineteen fourteen, Percy and Rose left England for America. Percy told folks it was quote to give mother a change because she

had been ill for years. But his timing was pretty sussed because he left right after the outbreak of World War One. Oh what a coincidence. Oh you do with timing's weed? I was just about to leave. Oh I'm gonna miss it. Sorry, you are going to miss the wall. Yeah. The Brits did not care for what they saw as his cowardice, right, and they weren't really that far off.

John Bird's biography says Percy told friends that quote he wanted to emerge as Australia's first composer of worth, and to have laid himself open to the possibility of being killed would have rendered his goal unattainable. Sorry, folks, kept dying the wall. I got shit to do? How many how many soldiers were like, I mean I had some

goals too, bro, But here I am well anyway. So they were like, sorry, Percy, if you come back, we're gonna be real shit to you, you know, And he is like, well, right, But in America Percy did well pretty quickly. Again, He's internationally renowned. So he's immediately playing concerts in giant music halls. He's befriending Duke Ellington at George Gershwin. He even gave a command performance for President Woodrow Wilson before, of course, the war came to America

as well in nineteen seventeen. Sorry, Percy, it's a world war. Yeah, you can't escape it, can I just say? I want to interject real quick and tease myself a little bit after going after the Australians this whole time, I was literally, you're reading this about him coming to America and them welcoming him and him doing well, and I was trying to come up with a bit about what the Americans would say, And I kid you not. In my head I literally had the thought, wait, what's an American accent?

How would I do an American voice? Do I know that one? Well, it's early, we don't usually record this early. You're trying to bring your excellent A game, right, transtant topics, that's right, trying to bring the people what they want. Mockery of worldwide accents. I guess you should do like how a brit would do an American accent? Really hit those rs. Oh, thanks Percy for coming over to America's super happy to have you here, and you'll do very

well with your fancy music from England. Kind of sounded like a male Joane Q Sack. I don't know why, so yeah, the war, you know, they're like sorry, the wars here, and he's like, damn it, I gotta do something anyway. So Percy enlisted as a bandsman and he played the saxophone and the oboe in the Army band. But as an encore to his band concerts, he would play a piano setting to the folk tune Country Gardens,

and this quickly became his most famous composition. It still is apparently the piece of music that he's most associated with today. After the war, Percy became an American citizen and he reached the peak of his career, playing around one hundred and twenty concerts a year. He also started developing elastic scoring, where a piece of music can be adapted for various numbers of performers and instruments. So usually you write a piece of music and you're like, okay,

there's you know, I need two cellos and whatever. You know, you have your very specific tone that you're trying to reach. Yeah, but he's like, well, what if you only have four people, I still want you to be able to play my songs. So he would figure out a way to score four various numbers of instruments, types of instruments, numbers of performers, that's everything. It's pretty interesting. And there's still only two composers that use it today, so it must be quite difficult.

Oh wow. But tragedy struck their family in nineteen twenty two. Percy and his mother had moved to White Plains, New York in nineteen twenty one, and her health took a sharp downturn. Rose had been sick for years, but now she started having more hallucinations and delusions, and she became

paranoid that her illness would ruined her son's career. Then Percy went on to tour the West Coast, leaving Rose alone in New York, where she was finally directly confronted by a friend about the rumors of an incestuous relationship between her and her son. Now, this accusation just really pushed her over the edge. It really unbalanced her, and on April thirtieth of nineteen twenty two, she jumped from the eighteenth floor of the Aeolian Building in Manhattan, and

she died instantly. She left her son a note beginning with quote I am out of my mind and cannot think properly, and it ended quote your poor insane mother. This is obviously a crushing blow for Percy. His very first composition from eighteen ninety three had been a birthday gift to his mother, and she had arranged and was involved in every aspect of his life, from his career all the way to his sexual relationships, for his entire life. But now he was alone. His grief and his depression

was intense, and he lost himself in his work. But he would soon meet a new love to occupy his heart, and we will hear more about that right after this Welcome Back everybody. So after Rose died, Percy immediately plunged

himself into work, trying to distract himself. He spent a year in Europe collecting Danish folk songs and doing this very intense concert tour, and then he came back to New York in nineteen twenty three continued to perform to great acclaim and popularity, and part of what kept him so much in the headlines was this sort of eccentric character that he created for himself. He knew, you know, you got to be good copy. It's not enough to just be a talented musician. You gotta wear a meat dress,

you know, to the Grammys. I think of Alexander Hermann from her last episode where he talked about, you know, playing the part is as important as your skill as a magician, Like, you've got to have this character that people are interested in. It's part of the entertainment. Yeah. Yeah, So at Percy's concerts, he apparently would run into the auditorium dressed in gym clothes and then leap over his

piano as his grined and wow. Percy also made his own clothes out of multicolored terry toweling material that he all stitched together. He looks like nothing so much as like a harlequin at a Renaissance fair if you look it up. Um. He also liked to sleep naked under his piano. Later in life, he became a vegetarian, but he hated vegetables, so he ate mostly bread, pastries, fruit, and nuts. Excuse me, highly relatable. I don't hate vegetables, but I as a vegetarian mostly eat bread, fruit, pastry,

and nuts. Quite literally, think of the staple diet. I mean, I feel like you must. He should probably have incorporated some beans or something. Yeah, I love a salad. But man also in instead of the usual like Italian terms, he would write weird instructions in his scores. According to the Big Smoke dot Com, so instead of terms like crescendo and arpeggio, he would instruct his musicians to play quote more flowingly but very wayward, or go ahead impulsively

and slow off hugely. Oh okay, which I think is kind of fun. There's such wrote terms that you typically use and they have a very specific meaning. But if he's trying to be evocative and be like you, do you get the gist of these words, like do kind of your interpretation of what I'm saying here might give you something a little more creative. Well, his music so wild. I really do think people should listen to it because

it's very interesting. It's very wild and raucous, kind of sort of very energetic is a good word, I guess, yeah. But also like there were times when schools and stuff would be like, come on over and share our music. Department in or you know, some kind of educational interesting part. And he would say, well, the reason my music is so unique is because I didn't have that kind of education. I'm not bound by yeah, you know, your regular music education, So I don't think it would make sense for me

to be in charge of that sort of thing. Well, you can decide if you want to listen to his music or not, but at least he is not personally profiting off of it anymore. Because another eccentricity this guy had less charming was that he was extremely preoccupied with Nordic culture, dating back to his childhood. But the older he got, the more convinced he became that Scandinavians had

gotten everything right. So he developed his own way of speaking, which was inspired by Nordic word forms that he called quote blue eyed English. Like instead of orchestra, he said blend band, and instead of lecturer, he listened to a fourth speaker. Instead of an article, he'd read a writ piece. In a word, he was a big fat racist, I mean basically, he was just like, and where have I heard this before? Boy? You know, these tall blonde people sure are the best people in the world, aren't they?

You know? Not a viewpoint that was good then, nor has aged well since. Not really. Music historian David Pear calls him, quote at root, a racial bigot of no small order, and he was apparently especially anti Semitic, saying that Jewish people weren't capable of making music as good as Scandinavians. And boy do I have some counterpoints for that, sir, by the names of I don't know, Neil Diamonds, Leonard Cohen, he's got I've got no use for Lennard Cohen, Gershwin,

I mean he's friends with Gershwin. Right, it's crazy. He's an ass whole clearly a racist asshole. Stephen Sondheim. Okay, look, he's not a smart man in this particular. No, no, this is terrible behavior, and it makes him a bad person as a whole. Um. But in nineteen fifty eight, also he wrote a little essay called the Things I Dislike. We should all write an essay, Yeah, I'd I dislike number one Percy Granger, anti Semitism. This essay began quote

almost everything. First of all foreigners, which means all Europeans except the British, the Scandinavians, and the Dutch. Wow, what a dick. I'm saying, good god, man, I mean, this guy started out possibly being a motherfucker and now he's just a motherfucker. You know, there's many ways to be a motherfucker, and this guy found both of them. Geez. He even veers into eugenesis territory. Of course he does, yea.

He wrote at one point quote, let us set our house in order to kill off the sick, the nasty, the ugly, the lazy. Jesus Boo Percy. This guy is the worst. This guy's really bad. Kill off the sick. I mean, oh my god. Look, something's even in that moronic mindset of Well, if we just kind of can sort of reign in genetics a little bit, we'll have perfect people. There's so many problems with that idea to begin with. Also, it doesn't work like that, and a

lot of the things he's talking about are not genetic. Like, sorry, but I know some beautiful people with some ugly ass children, you know, and vice versa. You don't know how it's gonna come out. Also, you know, a baby could be very beautiful and then grow up to not be that beautiful. It's kind of a plain normal looking person, and vice versa. So you don't know, I know a whole duckling with that story. There's the duckling and he says he wants to kill off the nasty well. Percy, why don't you

start with yourself? Right, you nasty well. Knowing all that about him, it's maybe not surprising that when he met the Swedish poet and painter Ela Strome in nineteen twenty eight, he was immediately stricken with her blonde, blue eyed beauty. Wow. Ella Strom sounds a little too close to Eva Brauns

for me. Yikes. They met on a steamship they were coming back to America in nineteen twenty six, and they became friends on the voyage, and then they met again in England the following year, and in October of nineteen twenty seven, they decided to get married. And there's not much written about Ella herself, so we can't really get

a good picture of her. So let's turn to the New York Times, because they ran an engagement announcement with a quote from Percy saying, quote, miss Strome is a very prototype of radiant Nordic, as lovely as the morning to look upon, and a regular Amazon to walk run swim and dance and play games at the same time.

She is one of the most deeply and many sidedly gifted artists I have ever met, and it is hard to say what charms I most saw in her bewitching beauty or the philosophical and emotional depths of her nature as shown forth in her art and thoughts. It is an unspeakable boon to me to have this soul satisfying comrade to commune with. Wow. So she's tall, she's blonde, that's good enough for me, twite, She's an artist. She

gets me. He also wrote a song for her, called to a Nordic Princess, and they married on August ninth, nineteen twenty eight, at the Hollywood Bowl, following one of Percy's concerts, in front of twenty two thousand people. I bet they didn't serve a meal to twenty two thousand people. Oh true, Yeah, I was gonna say. We had one hundred and fifty and it was nuts. Well. After marrying Ella,

Percy's creativity seemed to ramp back up. He started experimenting with electronic music as early as nineteen thirty seven, and he also started working on what he called free music and see there's sounds in nature that occur together but without harmony, but they're still not jarring to the ear. It's not like just hitting two random notes on a on a piano that sound weird together. That's two kind of discordant noises that work. Yeah, like birds singing together

or something. He was just like, there's all these sounds that aren't planned, but they sound beautiful together. Right, Sometimes I hear like, you know that the sound of an eagle screeching while while a jackhammer is breaking the pavement in the construction site behind our backyards, there's something beautiful about it. Well, he wanted to try and recreate that sort of natural sound music without the boring constrictions of

tone and meter. His positions included parts for these solivox and for theremins, but he felt that in order to have truly free music, human players would have to be eliminated entirely, leaving the performance to the machines. So I guess you'd be a big proponent of AI today. His eugenicism goes all the way to like what if we just kill off all the people at all, you know, the worst kind of people people. I mean, for real,

this guy's crazy. Now. To this end, he, alongside a young physics teacher named Burnett Cross, invented several very weird instruments, including the st read tone tool, which is basically this bizarre giant harmonica, the Butterfly Piano, which was this like smaller piano that was tuned to one sixth notes instead of the usual twelve, so an octave was broken down into six notes instead of twelve, and the Kangaroo pouch free music machine in nineteen fifty two, which, according to

Atlas Obscura, was quote designed to sound like a malfunctioning air raid siren. Okay, that was two things. First of all, great name, kangaroo pouch free music machine, I'm in, and also, second of all, designed to sound I feel like you could just get an air raid siren and break it. Yeah, that's what it's supposed to sound like. But another thing that was occupying his mind a lot was his overwhelming

desire for a Percy Granger museum. He told Ella, quote, I am hungry for fame after death, and he was very obsessed with his own legacy, partly because he felt he's a truly amazing musician. He had no peers in his own time and nobody understands me. And partly because he felt he was kind of the only remaining legacy of his deceased parents, particularly of course his darling mother, and to preserve his own life was in a way

preserving their greatest contribution to the world as well. Oh wow, So the guy just did not have a self esteem problem, is what I'm learning. Yeah, the shock of shocks. This guy wanted a whole museum dedicated to himself. Oh my god, obsessive. But Linda Nimick wrote a really in depth paper for the National Museum of Australia that says that pretty much as soon as his mother died, he got real fixated

on this idea. She feels that he was so closely like he just felt so closely identified with his mother that after she died, he felt naturally he must, you know, he's going to die soon too, kind of so he became very preoccupied with his legacy, even though he's only forty. When she passed away, like before he even arranged her funeral, he was writing letters about bequeathing this museum, the Percy Grainger Museum, and he started gathering together like a truly

overwhelming amount of stuff for it. He was a very avid collector. He kept everything and he gave He had like some forty thousand piece is of correspondence, music, manuscripts, photos, furniture, objects like the instruments of his own design or like a pucket watch that a famous composer gave him, and stuff like that, and creepily also the contents of Rosa's

purse the day she died and a lock of her hair. Weird, and they're all displayed in a case with like it's all spread out so you can see her two pairs of spectacles and her pair of gloves and stuff is bizarre, very strange. And he is the gym shorts I wore a red rocks Yeah, I mean yeah, he probably wouldn't weird. He probably does have that well. He contacted the University of Melbourne about giving him some land to build his museum on because he felt that it should be at

his birthplace sure, even though he did not live there. Right. The university at the time was broke, so they were totally all about this idea of having a museum for a famous composer on their campus. This would attract visitors to come in it would be at no cost to themselves. So they agreed, and the Purse Granger Museum opened in nineteen thirty eight, although not to the general public at first. It was only open to scholars, and Percy was fine

with that. I mean, I'm sure he thought scholars were better than regular people. Anyway, they should be studying me. Yes, he said, he didn't care if it didn't open to the public for a hundred years. He was feeling like a failure despite all his success, and he wrote to a friend that quote, all my compositional life, I have been a leader without follow us, which is also something that megalomaniacal racists tend to say. Well, you're a very weird guy. How many people could follow up the kangaroo

pouch free music machine. I'm a natural leader. I'm better than everybody else. Why aren't people lining up to listen to everything I say? In October of nineteen fifty three, Percy was operated on for abdominal cancer and this would eventually kill him, so, knowing his time was short, he made out a will stating that he wanted his flesh removed from his skeleton and cremated to be buried next to his mother's ashes, and that his skeleton would then

be displayed at the Percy Green Drum Museum. Oh my god, Now this wish was not carried out. Oh, either because no one could figure out how to burn his flesh off while also preserving a skeleton. Or maybe it's just because it's kind of an icky thing to ask. So it's easy. You just gotta get one big potato peela, don't He's like, flay the meat from my bone. I mean, like Jesus, everyone's doing that. Everyone at the mortuary busts out that will and it's like, uh, can we just

pretend we didn't read that part. Yeah, we're just gonna burn it. And this is smudgeoi smudge, I can't read what it says. He. I guess it's if someone writes a really weird thing in their will, you don't have to do it. Maybe you don't have to do it. I guess you don't have to do any of it. Right. Oh, it's given me ideas to write some crazy shit. Oh fuck, I gotta deal with it. Excuse me? What makes you think? And I won't be dealing with yours. I do think that.

But you know, if anyone's dealing with yours probably gonna be me. You're so you're saying you're gonna outlive me. I mean, I think we should both plan to outlive the others. I think we need to make any plans, because we're gonna die hand in hand. At one hundred and seventeen years old, happily watching the one hundred and fifth season of The Lost reboot, right after the series finale, which I directed. Oh wow, good job, that's the that's

the end. I look forward to that, huh in our enormous Parisian mansion right obviously, because they won't let us into Australia anymore. Your accents somewhere France is like, oh no, you're not coming here. We've also heard yours. You're covered in barnacles. No matter which country Scotland will take us,

will they? Well, all right, So anyway, again, is really worried about his death, so he makes out this creepy will, and then in nineteen fifty six, he deposited a package at a bank marked quote private matters do not open until ten years after my death, tantalizing. On February twentieth, nineteen sixty one, Percy Grainger died in White Plains at the age of seventy eight. Ella outlived him by eighteen years, going on to marry a much younger man when she

was eighty three and dying in nineteen seventy nine. But the story of Percy Grainger is barely even told yet because there's still that little private matters package to deal with. And in nineteen seventy one, the trustees of the Percy Granger Museum, scholars and archivists all gathered around to see what this incredibly talented and incredibly weird musician had left as his final calling card. What could be inside, maybe never before seeing compositions of folk songs that he'd collected,

or poetry that he'd set to music. Maybe letters to and from some of the incredible musicians and composers that he'd been friends with in life. You know, maybe some sort of manifesto about the best way to breed humanity into a bright, tall, blond future. Who knows either way.

We like to imagine a real sense of excitement in anticipation as they cut through the tape and carefully removed the lid of the box to find an extensive collection of pornography, some bloodstained clothing and around eighty three whips, some of them fashioned from conductor's batons. Oh, so we're gonna dig a little deeper into that box and explain everything we promise right after this break. Welcome back to Percy's sex box, everybody. I mean, what a time capsule,

you know. So, Yeah, Percy's Private Matters Box had been even more private than the trustees could have ever expected, because yeah, it was all about his sex life. They're probably like, jeez, I WI should have been the manifesto, I know, right, of all things I want to read now, Percy had been heavily into bondage and whipping during sex, which is you know what we'd now call BDSM, which stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.

So we kind of have the b's and d's and s's doing this an overlap. YEAHSM, but that's two. That's not very sexy, not really. I feel a nice short B DSM boom. Are you into b D D D SCSM like a fell asleep halfway through? I don't know acronym now. At the time, Siegmund Freud had only recently coined the term sado masochism to describe this this sexual urge, and the Percy himself referred to it as his quote

cruel joy and quote evil sex feeling. Oh. Now, he apparently had been experimenting with flagellation and other like bondage practices by the time he was sixteen. And then he visited Amsterdam when he was eighteen, and he was introduced to the underworld of BDSM through seeing some books of

photos of women being lashed. So maybe realize, oh, I'm not the only one you know out here that likes this kind of thing, right, And according to Stephanie Slake's article Fifty Shades of Percy Grainger, he also read violent literature that caused him to quote shake with delight. Now he clearly struggled with himself. Stephanie Slake writes that he punished himself for what he saw as his evil desires by standing naked in the snow, carrying heavy weights on

his back and burning himself on the stove. But because you know, it's hard to physically punish someone who gets off on physical punishment, he also loved it. He wrote, quote did my cruel joy, which shows itself both in wishing to give pain and take it arise from the whippings my mother gave me from the earliest childhood up to fourteen or fifteen. Maybe it did, And if this is the case, I must feel doubly thankful to her

for having given me my life's greatest boon thing. Not only was mother the most important person in my life and I owe everything to her, but I'm so glad she gave me this kink. I mean, right, I mean sure, I guess you could be grateful for wherever you got

your kink, but just a weird relationship. It's a really interesting quote though, because of course Sigmund Freud very much about oh, we all have incestuous desires for our parents opposite sex parents, so he must have read some of that and was like, you know, trying to understand himself in the psychological context of the day, right right, which, of course, we don't really go for it anymore, especially when it comes to BDSM. Most people are like, it's fine, Actually,

you can really enjoy it and it's no problem. Was a trusting, loving thing to do, Yeah, I have. This show has brought me into lurking on the BDSM subreddit in places like that, you really learn a lot. And it's amazing how many conversations that people are like, yeah, I was spanked and hit with switches and stuff when I grew up, and now I love it, and other people are like, no one ever did anything like that to me, and I love it too, So you know,

I can't really say it's either way. I remember hearing a story about someone getting really into nice play, which yeah, it's not for me, but you know, they were like, oh, I got tied up and then they run a knife on your back and it, you know, sometimes draw a little blood. And she was like, I had never done anything like this before, but it made her cry with happiness because she just felt so safe. Like she's like, I can't believe I'm letting someone do this and I'm

not worried. Yeah, So it was like just that release of like feeling so comfortable with somebody. It must be is like partly what makes it so exciting and sexy. Yeah, it must be similar to like a feeling you get like bungee jumping or something where you like, I'm on the I'm standing right here in front of something dangerous, knowing that I'm going to be fine. Yeah, I know that's pretty that's pretty exciting. I guess what makes sense why I wouldn't like it. I don't even like a

roller coaster. No, I don't trust none, y'all nous, And in that category, I only like roller coasters because for some reason, I'm like, I feel safe or strapped to seven thousand pounds of steel. But I do jump it out of an airplane. Sorry, I neither for me. I'll stay on the ground and watch and wave now John Bird,

Granger's main biographer. He says that Ella did not know anything about this kink of Percy's before they got married, but there's a letter dated four months before their wedding where Percy wrote to Ella quote, as far as my taste goes, blows are most thrilling on breasts, bottom in a thighs sex pots. I shall thoroughly, thoroughly understand if you cannot in any way see your way to follow up this hot wish of mine. Wow. Actually that's a very good way to approach it. It is, you know,

to say this is something I'm into. But of course I understand if you can't get into it right, which is I mean, the only way to do b DSM I think, Yeah, I have to say, if you're not into it, then it's not fun for me either. You can't force a kink on someone, nor can you really force them to give it up, right any I mean, like we were just saying, it's it's about the safety

and trust. You can't force a feeling of safety. Not possible. Yeah, but how funny that you have to like write like he's like, well, we're not together, but I want you to know what you're in for, So what do you like? What do I like? I don't know. That's just funny to me. I haven't trying to write like, Okay, this is what I'm into in bed you know before you get here. But this the contents of the Private Matters package, which again it included pieces of bloody clothing his many

many whips. It also included nude photos of both Ella and Percy tied up in various positions with visible whit marks on their back, and he even included some confessions and a letter marked quote read this, if Ella Granger or Percy Granger are found dead covered with whit marks, I love it. I don't want anyone to misunderstand what happened here. Yeah, He's like, if we're found dead, don't read this. But if we're covered in whit marks and found dead, that's when you read this. What does it say?

He wrote, quote, I am a sadist and a flagelent. My highest sexual delight is to whip a beloved woman's body to a lesser degree. I enjoy being whipped myself, and before marriage, used to whip myself every few weeks. Wow, he's a switch. Yeah, he's a switch totally. And so she must have Ella must have seen her way to follow up his hot wish after all, because she's definitely in these photos. I mean she's probably like, holy shit, I've been living in the stuff, yes, society in the world.

I didn't realize I could cut loose like this. Yeah yeah, I mean she's like, I'll give it a whirl, and then she got into it. Yeah. Now, my only complaint right here is that he's like, opened this package of nudy photos of me and my wife ten years after my death. Ella's still alive, by the way, and people are looking at these nudy photos of her in this museum. Yeah, she didn't have a say on that, So I find

that a little weird. But I guess she never complained, so maybe he asked her I had a time, like you careful put these pitches in, and she's like, not that one. I don't know, that's my bad side. She's like, I see that weird thing that my butt's doing in this one. Can't we do? Let me pick a few out for you, few out that are like I can stand beside. Now. Obviously this kind of thing is not this shocking right now. Just whether you get the letter

that I tell you open ten years after my death. Yeah, yeah, it's a post fifty shades of gray world. We all know what whippings are and things like that. It's such a nothing thing now, right. But at the time this was considered like a serious sexual perversion. They thought of it as a sign of a violent and sick individual. So that's also how Percy himself learned to contextualize it. He thought of these urges as childlike. He wrote, quote the core of me, my inner self, My senses have

stayed like those of a child. A child at nausey is naughty and looks to be punished for it. But he also thought the world would eventually catch up to him, just like he thought that it would catch up to his kind of music that was sort of ahead of its time. Part of his reasoning for waiting ten years just to reveal all this sexual stuff about himself was that he hoped by then people would be more accepting. M probably should have waited a little ten years, right,

more than ten years in the year twenty fifty seven. Openness, open this up and see what you think. Let's say twenty eight five, just in case, you know what, a hundred years from now, three hundred let's say three hundred years from now, you can find out that all I like to ship meself? Oh wow, whatever, he has a whole other box. Yeah, easier into this over the centuries. What you thought was that you knew everything, but you don't. Why did you think I'm made my clothes out of towels?

So that's all well and good. He thought the world would be cool in nineteen seventy one or whatever. But why include it at all in a museum that's austin sensibly dedicated to music and like Australian composition, Like, what does that have to do with anything? And it's because Percy felt that his sex life and his music were intrinsically linked, like his sexual urges and his creativity came

from the same place. He wrote in nineteen forty eight quote, I cannot give a true picture of my tone art and of my art life if I do not tell of the cruel joy that is one of the mainstairs of my being. Fierceness is in the keynote to my music. The object of my music is not to entertain, but to agonize. Oh it's supposed to sound like exactly. I mean, it's a malfunctioning air raised Byron So. I guess that's true.

So yeah, in his mind, the museum about himself would be both useless and false if he did not include this key piece of information about Okay, okay, So my music is like whipping you. Yeah, I love it, and you might like it. I don't I want to leave some marks on my audience, right, yeah, right, yeah, I guess so. And he really was very concerned about this.

He wrote to a friend and fellow composer, Cyril Scott in nineteen fifty six that quote, one of the greatest and most continual worries is that I might die without the full evilness of my sex feelings being known. To the world or recorded, which says to me that he was also a little bit of an exhibitionist. Right like death, he was getting off on people on knowing that people were going to know about this one day. I think he might be right about that makes sense. I mean,

even though he wasn't alive to enjoy it. Yeah, maybe it was enough. Maybe he was a little scared of actually having to deal with people finding out about it, but he still was kind of, you know, titillated by the idea that oh, it's in the envelope now, oh, any day someone might just open that They're going to

look at my naked body enjoy, you know. Stephanie yes Lake says that the inclusion of what's called the Lust branch of the museum has helped it totally surpass its original intention, Like it was supposed to be a physical homage to Percy Granger and shed light on composition in Australia. But in twenty seventeen, the University of Melbourne incorporated his stuff into a case study for a history of sexualities.

Another time, fine arts students visited to create original sketches, and postgrad students in bioethics and public health use the contents of the lust branch of the museum to analyze the concepts of stigma and autonomy. Really a lot more to study here than just music and whips. That is very interesting and smart, I feel, if you try to put it to different uses. Yeah. Yeah, Percy Aldridge Granger was a complicated man. No, okay, he's a freak in the street. Yeah, he's a big fat racist. It's a

folk music enthusiasts, he's a mama's boy. He's a virtuoso musician, an avant garde thinker, and a wild composer, and he never quite achieved his aims. His greatest contribution to music was not his wild, weird thirty pianos compositions, but rather kickstarting a renewed interest in folk music scholarship, okay, and of course preserving the folk music of several cultures. And his museum turned into a shrine to sexuality rather than to his musical genius, and more to his eccentricity also

than to his musical genius. So I mean, maybe, in being so sure that he needed to preserve his legacy for the future, he was very narcissistic and self satisfied, and he definitely was, obviously, but there is something to be said about being open with your sex life in a way that frees others. As Percy himself wrote in nineteen thirty quote, when we successfully follow and realize our lusts, we are lords. Indeed, lords with mummies, lords with mummies, mummies, bombies.

We were talking about this earlier because we watched a trailer for that movie with Toni Collette and Monica Bellucci, and I was like, Mama, Mafia, Mafia, Mama, Mafia mom. And I was like, m yeah, Tony Collette, Monica Bellucci, those are my And I was like, wait a minute, Padre Pascal and Oscar Isaac, these are the Hollywood daddies. Yeah they are. But women, Yeah, but women don't really

get what's the equivalent there. I mean, there's like cougar and stuff, but like what is Kate Blanchett and cougar is a different vibe. That's what it feels like. You're on the prowl, you're looking for. Daddies are not on the prowl. They're just like they're here to look hot and be in and you know when they say sit, you sit. Yeah. So and Monica Bellucci and Toni Collette, I would I would immediately sit for if they told me too. So, what is mommy? Sounds like, I guess,

not sexy? Yeah, well, I mean, but that's the old trick, right. It's like daddy to some sound sexy and to others sounds like my father, you know, and that's not people want to get into. I don't know, I guess, yeah, find us the mom mommy equivalent of zaddy or daddy. What do I say besides Tony Collett and Monica Bellucci are my mommy's because that even saying it, I'm like, that's not what I mean. That's not what you mean. I hear the words and it's not what I'm trying

to say. And I mentioned mother because there's, like I guess, specifically, a lot of gay men I hear say, oh, she's so mother, yeah, like Lady Gaga or something mother monster, right, Florence Pugh out too as well, she's so mother. But I don't think that's what they mean either. It's not a sexy thing. It's like, oh, that's like, I don't know, like a safe person, and she's giving me life like a mother. And if you make it sexual, it's weird, like Percy grangernds like mother told me I need it

to bend over and pick out my toys. You know you're like, who that's not comfortable? All right, Well, come through, listeners. We need to know what the word is here. Tell us what it is. I'm going to figure out if there might not be one, in which case give us jump jump on a speculation station here and trying to come up with something. Make up. Let's make one up. Yeah, think think Kate Blanchett, Thank, Tony Collette, think Monica Blucci,

think think Halle Berry. I always am um even uh oh Michelle Yos stepped up into that roomy, Yeah, she's up there. All women who if they if this is this is the only context I have? They if they said sit down, I happily would I would do it right away. Well hey, thanks again to Sarah has Asara on Instagram. That's a great suggestion. It was really fun to learn about Percy and his weirdness. And here was

his music is. I've enjoyed listening to it, even though he sucks in a lot of ways, but it was really cool to be able to explore b DSM in this episode. Yeah, I don't think we really have since we talked about Wonder Woman. God, yeah, I guess not. I don't think we really have gotten there said, it's just not that ridiculous these days. I know, it's just like, oh ho hum, you'd like to be tied up? Okay, No,

we hope that you guys also enjoyed this episode. Um, you know we love to hear from you, so please reach out. Our email address is ridic Romance at gmail dot com. That's right. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite Boom and the show is at ridic Romance. Yeah, and we're on TikTok as well. Ridiculous Romance. So follow us everywhere so we can keep up with you and you can keep up with us. Right, We love you, by bye bye, So long friends, it's time to go.

Thanks for listening to our show. Tell your friend's names, uncle's and this to listen to a show, Ridiculous Romance