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At Last
11:10
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The lights on the highway are carnival lights. The lamps on the distant hills where the rich people live, they're campfires from the army of Alexander the Great, or maybe will-o-wisps to lead me astray. The wind rattles my window, held together with masking tape. Let me out. Let me out.
"Were you reading?" my mother asks.
"No"
"I thought I heard you laughing," she says.
"You didn't."
I will read these stories with the hope (the real belief I will not admit) that they are true, that they will take me away from here. I still believe. Shhh, be quiet, you.
Every day after school I am a girl-spy. I know the secret path on the stairs. I know the names of the floorboards who will groan beneath me and betray me. I hold the fear of discovery tight--I must sneak into the control room, before the villain finds me.
But then, caught! I am a slave in Pharaoh's Egypt, scrubbing the dining room floors with a toothbrush. He has so many wine-spots from his Greek-style symposiums, the careless Pharaoh! His stern wife watches over the slaves, not knowing of the plot. Crossing the Sea of Reeds will be difficult, but oh! the wide skies of the desert, the barefoot freedom of the hot summer sun.
"It's got maggots!"
"Clean it up," my mother says. "You're not done scrubbing the floors yet."
The maggots birth themselves from the grey feathers of the songbird, writhe across the dirty white linoleum, scatter the daddy longlegs, hide in the art supplies among the broken paintings, among crayon pictures of screaming women.
One day I'll wake up and my arm will be broken and I'll say, "Maybe I need to go to the doctor," and she will say, "Here, let me help." She will pull me across her lap like she loves me, and break all of my bones with quick twists of her hands. She will bend my arms and my legs so that the jagged shards of bone rip through muscle and skin. Then she will pull out my bones, one by one, and stack them neatly beside us.
"There you are," she'll say, kissing my forehead. "There you are. Free at last."
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There are places where night doesn't fall.
It rises.
A dark flood welling up out of the ground.
Gathering around trees and buildings, pulling at the feet of the ones hurrying home.
These close their doors behind them, and turn the lock, taking a moment to listen, in case they were followed.
Not everyone finds their way. In northern countries they tell of the utburd, or the myling, the ghost of an infant exposed to the icy dark.
These ghosts are full of anger.
They will cling to a traveler's back, and compel them toward holy ground.
This destination will never be reached.
The utburd will get heavier and heavier, and the traveler will sink into the earth under the weight.
And disappear.
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4. |
The Machine Who Laughs
09:07
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The moon rose full, and as it cleared the spruce tops it was greeted by a sudden howling. George sat up in bed. Wolves had come down silently from the forest and had infiltrated the beach grass. It seemed to George that the sound went straight to the center of his being. It passed through the center and out the other side, traveling over the icy strait toward the moonlit mountain.
All his sensibilities quickened. Now and again, when the wolves stopped for a moment, George heard each grass blade rustling, each wave lapping. Waiting for the wolves to resume, he heard the blowing of humpback whales as they swung in close to shore.
The wolves were ending their song when, from the sea, the whales answered it. George swears that this is true. The whale music was, he says, like whistling, trumpeting, and singing combined. It resembled no work of man he knew, but it blended perfectly with the chorus of wolves. The forest's mournful ululations mingled with the brass winds and wood winds of the deep. The earth was singing to its moon, and the sea was harmonizing.
George sat silent in the middle of the music, yet he did not feel left out. It seemed to him that the two worlds, land and sea, were coming together in him. This morning he had padded. like the wolves, in bare feet on the mossy forest floor, and this afternoon he had paddled Icy Strait, like the humpback whales. A triumvirate, they praised the moon: lupus, George, leviathan.
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Michael Bell Bellingham, Washington
A Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too.
Some of this is music for video games. The rest is a fairly raw document of my ongoing attempt to find something new among the blinking lights in my studio at home.
Michael Bell recommends:
Noveller got me started. This is essential listening for guitar explorers. Always inspires me to continue the search for new ways to shape the air.
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This is the sound of music after music. For brave listeners (or those, like me, who aspire to be).
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Some Music for Robby Müller
by SQÜRL
If you find yourself washed in blissful guitar feedback as you play alone in your attic studio at 3am, this is for you.
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Disasters for Piano
by David Peacock
David Peacock reimagines the Disasterpeace score for piano.
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Mini Metro: RMX KIT
by Disasterpeace
Disasterpeace's latest game soundtrack is packed to the gills with samples, mimicking the background noise of the subways in the game.
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featured on Bandcamp Radio Nov 5, 2013
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