About

More Songs of Desire and Despair
A Flame in My Heart
The Invisible Man I Love
The Curtain
I Forgive You
The Picture
Plain as the Lie on Your Lips
Don’t I Have the Right?

Iris Rose had always loved singing along with all kinds of records, but especially the genre
known as “torch” songs, since they were usually great showcases for the female voice and
opportunities for dramatic expression. She had the impulse to create a show based on these
songs, but she didn’t want to simply put together a cabaret show of standards. Instead, she
began with the first part of Watchface’s usual method – she did research, created a structure,
and enlisted collaborators. She did not, however, use the rest of the method, in which ideas
were transformed into series of movements, since this show was all about the voice, both
sung and spoken.

In March 1987, Iris convened a group of songwriters around her dining room table. She had
recently received a grant of $600, and she made these potential collaborators the following
proposal: if they would write her an original song, she would pay each of them $100. The
song would remain the writer’s property, but Iris would have the right to sing it, without
royalties, in perpetuity. Those in attendance were: Iris’ husband, James Siena, who had
composed and performed music for her previous shows National Enquirer and The End of the
World; Joshua Fried, who had created soundtracks for her Camden and The Serial Killer
Series; Joshua’s brother and sister-in-law, Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, the songwriting
team behind the band The Cucumbers; singer/songwriter/political activist Oliver Hirsch; and
both members of They Might Be Giants, John Flansburgh and John Linnell.

In preparation for the meeting, Iris had listened to many of the great singers of the past,
including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Patsy Cline, Fanny Brice, and Helen Morgan,
attempting to identify what defined a torch song. She concluded that classic torch songs fell
into three general categories. First, and most familiar, were the songs about lost love –
“Stormy weather, since my man and I ain’t together, keeps raining all the time.” Second
were the songs in which the singer admits that her lover is not everything that might be
desired, and may even be abusive or self-destructive, but she loves him anyway – “Cause
whatever my man is, I am his, forevermore.” Third, and least common, were the songs about
an elusive soul mate the singer has never met but she believes is certainly out there
somewhere – “Lover man, oh where can you be?”

Iris explained her analysis to the assembled group and passed out cassette tapes she had
compiled that included the songs quoted above – “Stormy Weather”, “My Man”, and “Lover
Man” – plus “Sweet Dreams” by Patsy Cline, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” by Helen Morgan,
“Cry Me a River” by Julie London, and “Since I Don’t Have You” by The Skyliners, among
others. The songwriters all agreed to participate (though Joshua later declined when he
realized his time was committed to another Watchface collaboration, The Music Project).

While waiting for her new songs to be written, Iris embarked on the other research aspect of
the project. She interviewed female friends – and friends of friends – and asked them each
three questions that related directly to the three categories of torch songs:

1. What kind of things do you do when you’re trying to get over a breakup?

2. What are the meanest things that your boyfriends have ever said or done to you?
“mean things“ notes

3. Describe your ideal mate in detail.

Unlike most collaborators on Watchface shows, these informants remained anonymous
because of the highly personal nature of their contributions.

Soon Iris began receiving cassette tapes containing the original torch songs from the
songwriters. She also located an accompanist, Scott Traudt, who committed to the project,
and as songs appeared he began the work of transposing and arranging them.

In the summer of 1986, They Might Be Giants performed monthly at the East Village club
Darinka with Watchface as their opening act. Soon after that, John Flansburgh made his
acting debut in Iris’ The Serial Killer Series. For her current project, each of the Giants wrote a
song. Flansburgh’s was a sad song of lost love in waltz time, titled “Don’t I Have the Right?”,
that included the lyrics:

Don’t I have the right to be over you yet?
I’ve tried pretending. I tried to forget.
Though it’s past three AM, I would still let you in
‘Cause I can’t go on dreaming alone.

Linnell’s contribution was a dark, smoky number about a woman enduring her partner’s
infidelity, called “Plain as the Lie on Your Lips.” “Plain as the Lie on Your Lips” lyrics

Iris didn’t feel that Oliver Hirsch’s song fit neatly into any of the traditional torch song
categories she had outlined, but after he had made some slight revisions, she accepted it,
because she liked the song anyway. Called “The Picture,” it was written from the point of
view of a woman who recalls drawing a picture of flying people as a child and being told by
grown-ups that it was impossible. When she grows up, she refuses to accept other people’s
idea of what’s possible. The song was almost an anti-torch song, since the singer declared
her independence and lack of belief in the romantic ideal:

And now I look at married life, I guess
Like wildcats look at pets and such
A warm and steady hand feels fine
But it’s not worth the master’s touch

Rather than compose a song specifically for the project, Deena and Jon found a song they
had previously written, “A Flame In My Heart”, that they thought would be appropriate. It was
more upbeat than the others and, like Oliver’s song, didn’t adhere specifically to the
guidelines, but Iris decided that being a song about desire, it was close enough and would
make a high energy opening number.

James’ mournful song “The Curtain”, on the other hand, which was a perfect example of a
lost love torch song, included this chorus:

Don’t bother deceiving
Next time I’ll know
It won’t mean a thing
Since the curtain came down on our show

Iris herself wrote the lyrics for a song about an abusive relationship, “I Forgive You”, and Scott
Traudt collaborated with her on the melody. The one category of torch songs to which there
were no submissions was the perfect-man-I’ve-never-met type, so Iris wrote both music and
lyrics for “The Invisible Man I Love”. “Invisible Man I Love” lyrics

Once Iris had received (or composed) all of the songs, she decided on their order:

“A Flame in My Heart” by Deena Shoshkes and Jon Fried
“The Invisible Man I Love” by Iris Rose
“The Curtain” by James Siena
“I Forgive You” by Iris Rose and Scott Traudt
“The Picture” by Oliver Hirsch
“Plain as the Lie on Your Lips” by John Linnell
“Don’t I Have the Right?” by John Flansburgh

With the song order set, Iris went through her interview notes and chose her favorite details
from the stories her informants had told her, but she did not construct them into an actual
script. Using the song order as the structure, she created an outline for the spoken portions of
the show. song order and outline The stories remained somewhat improvised, based on specific
themes and remembered details from the women she had interviewed. In performance, Iris
rambled on between songs about her failed romances as she became more and more
visibly drunk – on fake cocktails – eventually letting her sassy bravado slip away. In her final
bit of patter before the last song, she vulnerably asked for the things she really wanted,
including to be taken seriously and listened to.

It should be noted that although Iris was “in character” when she performed it, she did not
approach creating the role in the same way an actor conventionally would. Iris did not
know anything about this woman other than her occupation and her romantic history –
exactly what the audience knew. The chanteuse had no name other than Iris Rose and was
not intended to be a fully formed woman but rather an archetype of a torch singer.

Before its first performance, Iris already had three venues lined up for the show, which she
called More Songs of Desire and Despair – though everyone in Watchface generally referred
to it as The Torch Song Show. The premiere performance was as part of Watchface: The
Spring ’87 Collection, an assortment of nine shows, old and new. They were performed in
three sets of three over two weekends in the new space in La MaMa’s basement known as
The Club. Two of the other eight shows in the Collection were The Music
Project, in which Joshua Fried joined James and Chazz Dean, and a solo piece by Kim X
Knowlton called Cowboys, also with original music by Oliver, which he whistled live on
stage.
La MaMa flyer
La MaMa card
La MaMa listing

Just a few weeks later, More Songs of Desire and Despair appeared as part of the Tweed
Ensemble Fourth Annual New Works Festival, Iris’ third consecutive year participating in the
festival. Tweed postcard The other shows that appeared in Watchface: The Spring ’87
Collection and were also included in the Tweed festival were The Music Project, Twins, and
Septophonic. Fortunately, Tweed videotaped the festival, which provided Watchface with
their only video documentation of these shows.

The third and final venue for More Songs of Desire and Despair was The Knitting Factory,
which was at that time located in a storefront on Houston Street, below street level. While
onstage, Iris realized that this gig was different from the other two. Unlike La MaMa and the
Tweed festival, where the show was clearly part of a theatrical event, The Knitting Factory
was a music venue. The audience was made up primarily of strangers who presumably had
come to hear some music. “It dawned on me during the performance that there was nothing to clue them in to the concept. They seemed to be taking my performance at face value – and maybe wondering why I was talking so damn much between songs. Nothing in the promotion or the emcee’s intro clued them in to the fact that my rambling self-pity and bitterness were as much an illusion as the alcohol in my glass.”

Iris had decided that for each of the three venues she would have a different look and
imbibe a different (fake) alcoholic beverage. Each look was meant to represent a different
kind of torch singer, though all three wore long rhinestone earrings and black pumps with
very high heels. For La MaMa, she was a Vegas-style professional who drank martinis and
had short black hair, long black satin gloves, and a red cocktail dress sprinkled with
rhinestones. For the Tweed festival, she was a New York cabaret singer with a red bob,
velvet choker, the black gloves, and low-cut satin cocktail dress with satin roses clustered at
the waist. The redhead’s drink of choice was champagne. The hard-drinking blonde
has-been who performed at The Knitting Factory wore black brocade and black lace and
drank a prodigious amount of straight whiskey.

Though More Songs of Desire and Despair was never performed again after this two-month
period in 1987, one of the songs created for it went on to another life. In 1996, “Don’t I Have
the Right?” appeared on the album Unsupervised by Mono Puff, a side project for John
Flansburgh, with special guest Nancy Lynn Howell providing the vocal.