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(Text and sound piece created for Arts Catalyst School of Broadcasting, 2021)
I can search and find
the subtle sticky sounds of someone else’s mouth opening and closing,
pull another body closer.
I can press up against a speaker
playing rain
as a digital avatar boyfriend is transmitted through the night
sleeping, snoozing
from a distant sound studio
simultaneously slipping
between multiple people’s sheets
his electronically generated chest
a voice
rising and falling
intimately reassuring
beings in the dark.
I can read of Kurosawa
and the lost natural noises of Tokyo
I live up high and the day begins with hearing before seeing,
the sound enters through an old wooden window
He tells me of the tofu seller’s bugle
the tinkle of the windchime seller’s wares
the bells of itinerant monks chanting sutras
the humming of kite strings, jaunting me to places I’ve never been.
I can seek out bodily sounds recorded,
whole archives
recalling
yawns,
sighs,
rasps,
cries,
sips and sneezes.
The detail of tongue against teeth
hands tenderly moving through the hair on someone else’s head,
all those bits of humans we respond to as animals.
I can bring to mind
the subtle puff of spore
the swish of leaf
and sploosh of geyser
our soft bodies porous to pitches
listening in to deep sea chamber calls.
My friend Wee Sarah can hear what others can’t
picks up and amplifies
microphones
hydrophones
static, gathering like fluff across distance.
I can feel the haunt
as hearing is ghostly
I can listen to old records and tapes
my dad reanimated
in analogue form
feel his hands, physical and alive, choosing this and this and this
a figure dancing.
I can bring you close to me,
giving the neighbour a yogurt pot and string across the wall
speaking voices, hot breath down lines into ears.
I can feel the bass
music becomes transmission
a collective mind gathering
our bodies as feeler-antennae
a magnifying
like iron filings we’re inexorably pulled together.
I can hear you breathing,
sonically revealing the landscape of your mouth,
the way sound fills the inside of you,
the body an organ
we exchange.
I can listen in,
hearing someone else’ windy day via zoom
blowing through my portable speaker.
We’re all in wave form
in frequency and fluctuation
a green line oscillating
audio appearing to come through us rather than from us.
You’re suddenly close to me
an energetic tide
a blanket pulled across,
enveloping
up and over.
The body rumbles on.