THE BODY RUMBLES ON (WE’RE IRON FILINGS AFTER ALL)

(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.