I wrote a crazy fan letter to Frank Zappa in 1975...

 Kit Leee @ Magruser Eeel

7 Pesiaran Ampang Hilir

KUALA LUMPUR 16-06

MALAYSIA

Frank Zappa

c/o DiscReet Records Inc

5831 Sunset Boulevard

Hollywood, CA 90028

United Mutated States

Dear Frank:

Having just got up from troubled sleep on a Sunday morning I felt compelled to head straight for the typewriter and mail this off to you - even if it turns out to be an embarrassing variation on the Crazed Fan Letter theme. I can't help being personal about it - but here's the self-introductory blurb which just might explain everythang:

I'm 25 years old and almost Chinese. In April 1968 I witnessed my first teenaged rock concert in the Fillmore East and afterwards you told me about Lumpy Gravy and even handed me a weird looking

chocolate knob which I consumed unthinkingly several hours later; I also talked with Ian Underwood who was very kind, and I shook hands with Jim Black not realizing at that time he was the Indian of the Group. 

Anyway, since that night the universe has mutated for me in a most bizarre but absolutely fun way. Because the very next year (1969) my mind got zapped and I suddenly discovered what everything was all about. Doctors might try and blame it on the marijuana I was smoking at the time - but I believe if anything triggered off the entire episode it was Music performed at a certain UHF level which helped raise my kundalini (if you'll pardon the expression). 

Anyway, I have managed in the face of uneven odds to obtain every album you've churned out - not caring that people thought I was just another little sucker, tasty or not. Of course that qualifies me to apply for membership in United Mutations - but that kind of thing could become impossible to cope with and I have preferred to run a sort of UNITED MUTATIONS (Local Chapter) anyway and I hope you don't stop me and make me pay royalties or whatever because I ain't rich yet.

The question/s is/are: Are you really God? Can I be your Son? Or to put it less obviously, aren't you in fact the Monster Magnet? And am I not your Son returned? There must be some kind of relationship here that the perceptive genealogist might hold up for public inspection. Maybe you're just Uncle Meat and that makes me another nephew or niece (probably both).

Don't worry about it, I'm not. Worried, I mean. In fact I'm pretty excited - and have been for the last 7 years. Tell me it's true, Frank! Put some Meaning & Purpose into my post-teenaged life. Jeez. This letter wasn't intended to degenerate into such a low order of cheesiness — but I sincerely don't care. (Now am I consciously ripping off these lines from you or is it merely a natural process of a normal mutant education?)

Anyway, I have forgotten most everything I'd wanted to say in this preliminary attempt to project some basic form of communication. Yes, I was going to outline some dreams I have enjoyed! Just to give you an idea: I'm stuck on the ground waiting for something to show up; suddenly a formation of jets whizzes out of the blue and Holy Hotcha! they aren't planes, they're the Mothers and Frank Zappa is squadron leader; and the next thing I Know is that I'm being sucked up into that formation. Pretty obvious but pleasant. Another time you're making some wholesome movie in a big field full of cables and wires and chimpanzee cages and actual caravans - and I just happen to be passing through and... I forget what happens next.

Any clinical psychologist that's worth his gravy would point out that these dreams are only picture fragments set up by my impressionable subconscious after hearing all them songs.

Especially since the flight sequence is straight out of “Absolutely Free" and the other bit of perversion looks suspiciously like a revamp of the liner illustration in CHUNGA'S REVENGE! This sort of thing never fails to screw me up completely on a nice Sunday morning. I mean to say that the problem is not a localized one. A week back I met an Austrian artist who told me he talked to you in some Viennese nightclub; and he said you're the least hung up, most open, and genuinely nice person he's ever met in the music business etc. 

And I replied, "That's probably because Zappa is an Operating Thetan" hoping to scare him into silence but - Double Your Money & Wowie Zowie to the Power of Ten - that guy knew all about Ron Hubbard!

All this is not intended as a Plea for you to don your famous Zorro cape and Ur-Mu robe direct from Woolworth's Jupiter... I'm only trying to make you understand why it's pretty important that I get to

hear from you — my superego is in grave danger! Hate to whine about this but you realize that for a while things got so out of hand I'd be using you as an Authority crutch like: Zappa does this, it's gotta

be good etc. Or: Would Frank do the same etc? I hope that by the mere feat of establishing a solid physical channel of communication (as opposed to a fantasy plane correspondence) the situation will be restored to beautiful perspective, whatever that looks like.

In a way I can dig why all this is happening. Having read and transcribed a long 1968 interview you had with some guy named Kofsky, I have convinced myself that it's no mirror trick and that you can really do it. Do what, I can't say if you asked.

Okay, more confessions. After all it's Sunday. I confess to having at certain phases of Expanded Consciousness blissed out on the Idea that you were, in actual fact, just myself in another mode of Time. In other words or worlds, your whole physical manifestation could be described as myself in the Future being transplanted into the Past (1941 or nine years before I was born) and now coexisting in simultaneous spacetime like some freak phenomenon. 

This kind of solipsism is dangerous to put down in black & white - but I don't care because I've had an uneasy sleep and things were getting a little murky - and I hope that the physical reality of my writing to you might help correct the metaphysical focus of my dental hygiene dilemma - do you have bad teeth too? I would also appreciate any help from your direction in getting a clear view of what Ron Hubbard has been doing. It's important to me because: just think! if Hubbard is for real everything is going to turn out different from what Hymen Cunt expects.

(Notice how often I use the word “real”: remember I asked you one question at the Fillmore in 1968, a silly question in retrospect: "Is your hair real?" Mine was on the short side then and I couldn't

believe anyone could grow hair like that. Incredible.)

I snapped this pic in 1968!

In case it means anything I'll just fill you in on some other irrelevant technical data about my present circumstances. The nifty envelope this letter comes to you in with the INRI mark represents my singlehanded attempt to incorporate truth into mass communications. INRI is the name of an atom—sized company I own which dabbles in advertising for income while the insane brain cooks up megalomanic schemes whereby I, too, will eventually have a record label of my own (AKASHIC) and maybe even produce a couple of films. Holographic movies are out of the question right now for obvious reasons - but I have been inspired by your growing success on the financial plane and view it as a Statement of Faith. Yes, I play music but not in a band because I haven't got any instruments worth discussing. Suffice to say I was raised on a snob diet of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Leonard Bernstein and my own internal soundtrack. Which is why I like your music without its having to come around and bite me in the ass. I recently bought an Edgar Varese album but find you cleaner, wholesomer fun — and more danceable too.

I used to be “married” with two girls (aged 6 and 3 named Moonlake and Tinkerbell Love) but she’s now living with another guy and it’s quite all right though occasionally it drives me to strange paths, such as this letter might indicate. We are a closely-knit but not together-enough community of freaks, quasi- & pseudo- & absolute. Not everybody digs real music; lots dig the blues which I suppose is all right if you're completely fucked. 

Not too long ago Muhammad Ali was in Kuala Lumpur which was like putting this dump on the Atlas. And immediately afterwards the Disney circus rolled up and even Charlie Byrd. Things are squirming in some reassuring semblance of life. I have begun to entertain secret thoughts that one day we'll have Dylan and the Mothers blowing the equatorial pants off the local flora & fauna etc. Why not? Pete Townshend almost made it here two years ago, or did he? Even if nothing happens over here I hope that later on (maybe middle of next year) I will get a chance to go back to the States and see about further saturating the record industry with the local product. In such an event could you & would you be of Great Help? I mean, do you want to do something like that or do you prefer to do your thang and let me do mine alone no matter what a drag it is to even think about?

Do you still live in Laurel Canyon with wife and kids? Only wanna know. Anyway I'm running out of tape and would honestly LOVE to hear from you. But if you don't bother to reply I won't hold it against you.

Eternal Excitement Ecstasy & Love

  

Kit

27.VII.75

This doodle served as filler for the 3rd page, with the handwritten inscription:
"Love to all The Mothers - old and new!"