Exquisite Corpse

Track 8 on Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

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“Exquisite Corpse” is a surrealist game in which players draw part of a picture and then fold the paper along the edge of the drawing so that the next player, who must… Read More

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Exquisite Corpse Lyrics

[Hedwig]
I got it all sewn up
A hardened razor-cut
Scar map across my body
And you can trace the lines
Through misery's designs that map across my body

A collage
I'm all sewn up
A montage
I'm all sewn up

[Yitzhak]
A random pattern with a needle and thread
The overlapping way diseases are spread
Through a tornado body with a hand grenade head
And the legs are two lovers entwined

[Hedwig]
Inside I'm hollowed out
Outside's a paper shroud
And all the rest's illusion
That there's a will and soul
That we can wrest control
From chaos and confusion

A collage
I'm all sewn up
A montage
I'm all sewn up

[Hedwig & Yitzhak]
The automatist's undoing
The whole world starts unscrewing
As time collapses and space warps, yeah
You see decay and ruin
I tell you, "No, no, no, no
You make such an exquisite corpse," oh yeah

[Hedwig]
I've got it all sewn up
A hardened razor-cut
Scar map across my body
And you can trace the lines
Through misery's designs that map across my body

A collage
I'm all sewn up
A montage
I'm all sewn up, ow, ow, ow, ow
Woo

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“Exquisite Corpse” is a surrealist game in which players draw part of a picture and then fold the paper along the edge of the drawing so that the next player, who must continue those lines with their own drawing, cannot see what previous players drew. The result is a picture that, like Hedwig in “Exquisite Corpse,” is a queer collage of connected but very different parts.

Here’s the result of a 1928 game of Exquisite Corpse played by legendary surrealists Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Max Morise, and André Breton: