2132 Tuesday 17 August 2023
My Beyerdynamic closed-back headphones press lightly against my head. My hands grip the cans. In my peripheral vision, a rainbow of LEDs from the Roland drum machine idle indifferently.
I’m floating down the river Lethe now. I can hear the reverberations of sound splash across the dark fluid. The water is calm, but moving. The craft I find myself in — an undefinable blurry structure, a skiff maybe, and yet, solid. The low drone of the current is interrupted by the sound of the universe tearing open.
I am slowly drifting through a crevasse; light seems to be emanating from the corners of the cavelike material. The hum of the noise floor defines the topography like an old Joy Division album cover.
A knob is turned by a disassociated hand. As the knob turns, the cavern glitches slightly, changing the contours of its geography. The tight space opens up; the river expands its reach. And I’m still buoyed by an undertow pulling me through its maw.
I’ve been sitting in this craft for hours, listening to the landscape reveal itself.
A patch cord is plugged into an input jack. The sound violently changes. The terrain contorts.
A button labeled “Freeze” is pushed, and the contortion stops; stretching itself into a new landscape.
The low drone has been replaced by an angelic chorus, modulating across sky. My craft has disappeared. I’m standing, floating really, over a crystalline vista vibrating with light and sound.
Another patch cord is plugged into the device.
The device complies, filling out the negative space by defining its boundaries through sound.
The device, called a “texture synthesizer”;
The device, using a signal processing technique called granular synthesis;
The device, recalling a memory, choreographs a transmutation of time.
Mother confides that I used to pee the bed, too, you know. I’m making her bed in the flat light of the afternoon. The question of the comfort of her pillow hangs unsteadily, unanswered.
The device has a memory; and as the continuity of time moves forward, inexorably, the device remembers. It plays back aspects of its memories; mixed and jumbled. The parts of the whole, decomposed, unrecognizable; smeared.
The experience of time has become a texture of memory.
A complexion of continuity.
A kaleidoscope of musical tones constructing a Lovecraftian dreamworld fluctuating lithely, and blithely, through time, by the active corrosion of memory.
The device remembers. But imperfectly.
The device knows. But instinctively.
The device wishes to make contact. But only after it gorges itself on memories.
The daily sweep and clean of the sunroom is almost finished. The pillow fluffed. The sheets dry.
Is this true, I wonder. Does she mean my brother? Do you mean my brother? No, you.
In the next moment, she beckons me by my brother’s name, as she furiously clicks on the mouse. The Mac mini, wheezing loyally, as if the effort to navigate through the late-stage capitalist landscape of an email Inbox were an affront to its design and a burden to be surmounted. She is pointing at an email from the Social Security Administration, almost drowning in the tide of spam.
I twist the ‘Position’ knob on the device, and Mother declares she already took her meds, accusingly. The bed sags as she turns away from me.
No, that was at 2pm. It’s now 8pm. She looks back at me in disbelief. You just gave me those. No, that was hours ago — and they were different. She calls me by my brother’s name and asks, almost pleadingly, searchingly, Are you sure? Possibly, a part of her is terrified over the loss of continuity. Continuity, with a capital-C, even.
I twist the knob labeled ‘Density’, and the grains crystalize into a rectified, recognizable uniformity. It’s 2132 on a Tuesday. I can feel the soft pressure of my Beyerdynamic headphones. The rhythmic dance of my drum machine LEDs blink anxiously. It’s quiet. The audio has been played out for a while now I think.
Downstairs, a Cminor chord echoes softly out of the unlit sunroom over the hum of a nebulizer as Mother wheezes.
I roll the knob the other way as far as it will go.