5 :: connoisseur of drones ::
[posted 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. An accident's been moved out of the left lane— still slow though, due to gaper's delay. Northbound Tri-State tollway slow from the Cermak Toll Plaza to the North Lake Watertower, recovering from an earlier accident there.
Thomas' first thought is stop. He reaches out, gropes for Off, silences the report. And then he closes his eyes, tries to remember. There was something there, before the radio poured words into his mind, something in the dream that he wants to bring out. A bowl filled with pieces. He reaches over again, and picks up his handheld Sony tape recorder. Then, on his back, he narrates:
—Um, dream, September the 22nd. A bowl, presented to me by someone, an old man? The bowl is full of pieces of something, milk-colored stone. Polished pieces broken.
He stops, rubs one eye, thinks. —The bowl is a model. We too are full of fragments; memories. Possible project: ask yourself: how are we affected by these pieces we carry with us? How do they alter our experience of the present? The doctrine of nonattachment: does it suggest that we should—(he churns the air with a hand here, looking for the words)—relinquish our memories, as well?
He thinks here of Rachel, and he feels haunted.
He pauses. OK stop. He will listen to that tape again later and decide if it makes sense then. He stands, shrugs into his robe, twists the rod that opens the louvers of his blinds. The room grows golden with the light of Chicago autumn.
It's his day off. He thinks he'll go in to the record store. He called Freya up on Wednesday to see if any new drone CDs came in with the week's shipment. She told him about a new Rafael Toral disc; Cyclorama Lift 3. He's heard Cyclorama Lift 2 and Cyclorama Lift 4 before; they're tracks on Toral's earlier release, Aeriola Frequency. They're shimmering, and sad, and he loves them. He's eager to hear the missing third piece.
Thomas needs a shower, but first he wants some music—he turns the CD player and the receiver on with two touches. Pushes play with a third. A moment—something whirs—and then forty voices rise. It's a Phill Niblock piece, a thick mass of sound, as textured and seemingly as solid as a slab of petrified wood. But the voices shift, and after a few minutes what seemed solid as stone reveals itself to be shot full of life. It changes. It grows. Thomas listens. An image of vegetation shines emerald in his mind.
::
