BOOK ONE : LISTENERS AND READERS

:: AUTUMN 2000

connoisseur of drones :: 10/11/00

Vegetation. A bowl filled with pieces. And he wakes up into traffic. East-West Tollway westbound heavy from before the Tri-State to just before the York Toll Plaza. Oh. An accident’s been moved out of the left lane— still slow though, due to gaper’s delay. Stop. Northbound Tri-State Tollway slow from the Cermak Toll Plaza to the North Lake Watertower, recovering from an earlier accident there. Thomas reaches out, gropes for Off. Inbound Kennedy Expressway’s 45 from O’Hare to downtown; about fifteen minutes faster in the express —. He lies in bed. He wants to — but wait. There was something there, first, before the words, something in the dream that he wants to bring out. He can remember a bowl filled with pieces. He reaches over again, picks up the Sony Cassette-corder TCM-454VK, and depresses the button with his thumb. Then, on his back, he narrates: by the time we reach our twenties we are already full of fragments. Rubs one eye. We can’t take any more on without rearranging the ones already there. The experience of our lives, psychologically-speaking, from, um, the time we are very young to the time we die, is the process of selecting fragments to let go of. What he means by fragments is memories. And also the fears and biases and behavorial impulses that are determined by memories. He pauses. OK stop. He will listen to that tape again later and decide if it makes sense then. He rises, shrugs into his robe, twists the rod that rotates the louvers of the blinds. The room grows golden with the light of Chicago autumn. And now, sound — Thomas turns the CD player and the receiver on with two touches. He wants to go to the record store today. Pushes play with a third. A moment — something whirs — and then the room fills with sound. Freya called him up yesterday to tell him that there was a new Rafael Toral CD in, an EP; he’ll go pick that up. The sound is a single massive chord, 40 different voices in it: a chord that changes into other (dis)chords, constantly, barely perceptibly. Phill Niblock. Any piece by Phill animates a space — it lives on there for its duration, you can join it and leave at will, always knowing it’s there to re-enter, as you can re-enter a room in your house. He has turned this particular room into a block of sound, as tangible and textured as wood. Thomas stands there for a minute, needing a shower, gauging the nuances of this music, letting his experience of being synchronize with them. An image of vegetation is emerald in his mind. Fragment.

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