Friday, August 03, 2007

Recording Their Passing

The room is bright white and rectangular. There are tables or shelves along the walls and a round table in the center of the room. It seems that the room gives off its own light but there is also a window. Through it comes sunlight and a breeze that teases the white cotton curtains.
I have the impression that beyond the window I would find a serene country landscape. There
is a quiet feeling, as if am adrift in a lonesome world, the only active inhabitant in a house full of sleepers.
I am excited and very busy. I have equipment in this room. Some of it looks like the controls of a starship from a black and white 1950s TV show.
I spend a great deal of time and attention manipulating particles of sound. I separate them like selecting individual grains of sand from a vast shore with the intention of creating a Mandala.
I am immersed in the detail, rearranging the most miniscule, almost nonexistent elements.
I move and redistribute them creatively, fluidly, without concern for the end result. I have
the utmost trust that the final product will be wonderful beyond my imagination.What I am touching is real, has a life span like a flower or a snowflake.
It will expire. It exists only briefly for a single delicate moment. I am moving quickly to catch as much as I can, like catching the white butterflies of my childhood in subtler form- with a circuit board for a net.
All I am really doing is recording their passing. I cannot hold them, cannot produce them, I can only track their motion.
Like clicking a camera over and over again without looking to see what image may be developed
because all you aim to do is dance with light. So I delight in sifting through an infinite supply of something invisible as quickly as possible. If I am not quick I will miss brushing up against something unique and unrepeatable.
I have equipment for tracing this interaction between myself and the invisible tears of a hundred thousand angels, and I have equipment for playing it back...
The play back is like displaying cups of water, there is no way to know that I danced with the rain to collect those seminal pools of life spent.