“Time Study”

                Of the slowdown & DING-DING!

& its message: on time. One track of sampled phrases
the arcing pitch of the streetcar engine, the page-flipping 
on a table, the bell resonance. One track for a looped beat 
& rumbling undercurrent. A third for distortion counterpoint 
Essay as drone festival on a moving train. The blur of brick 
wall to green tree. The phone someone is shouting into, “I’m 
in Rhinecliff!” Screeching slow down, the stop & the 
speeding up, the motion is the sound & vice versa
Ongoingness marked by the no-longer. Some tracks with 
teeth removed. A frenzy & a thickness help hear the gaps
a whoosh cuffs the ears. Of wind, labored breathing, dialogue 
Footsteps keep time. The ear’s repertoire, with varied fluencies 
composes footsteps, streetcar bells, bird calls, cicadas & 
engines as speech modulators. One audio capture of 
an iPhone video recording of a walk through an alley & 
another of an iPhone video recording on Bowen Trail 
Isolated vocalizations, bird imitations cut with laughter
Then graphemes suspended in negative space

“Desk (for DDD)” 
  

                 from Two strangers 

skirting close to a god complex, fade up into the ringing 
without the percussive start. Feet when wheeled or jarred by a knee 
Of the jolting screech pattern before the stationed hum

“I wasn’t expecting that (9 Apr 2020)”
  

                 Arc of a moving vehicle like a spaceship

starting up, live delay. A continuous military aircraft. Starting north on 
N. 1st, west on E. 2nd, south on Herbert, one of many glorious alleys 
east on University. A walk is linear in one sense, circular when return
meets departure, still to time & place in memory. A recorded 
soundwalk a few weeks into quarantine. The grief of both! 
The vertigo of sonic memory suggests you’ve gone off the map 
The passing of one with the name of a month. After the passing of one with 
a professional pronoun different from the personal. To write in 
word pairs one too many words. To teeter. Verbs & adjectives in 
noisy twos. By whose hand does an author die? J, how have you 
reconciled the theory of M’s self-care when M is known for taking 
her own life? Loop by cut-&-paste every ten seconds. Reverse every 
duplicate. Living is an act of cession, letting it slip from grasp. To decide is 
lonely. To find the third. Of a walk interrupted by looking. To train the 
ear only to the time of each decay until the body gives out some 
industry. Of stations & a train for embarking & disembarking 

“You can actually say something (2011-2018)”

  
            A one-sided phone conversation recorded as video 
  
Ongoing intonations of sympathetic complaint. Sardonic humor marks 
the bind of naming a violation of some sort, probably work related, now named 
microaggression. Afternoon shadows against a wall. Sun noise constantly moves 
through the filters of tree branch & window blind. Of disassociating from subordinate 
placement, which I say is normal to the person on the phone. Intimacy is having no 
memory of who I was talking to 

           Where a person on the other end of a crisis survival phone call lacks 

a voice & name hints of shared institutional affiliation. Into that break comes 
another phone call, What you do & what you will continue to do will 
exceed the structural violence of academia. The point of what 
you do is absolutely bound up with the person who rigorously 
& beautifully confounds the disciplinary foundations of the 
imperial university & who is a key contributor to ending that 
violence, transmitted to the edge of a former bed, by the angled narrow 
beam of sun & suspended dust, above a noise floor 

           You can make a shape, cut then paste it into a file

isolate a certain formant or upper partial, turn speech into total tonalism. In a 
moment of pure listening, I once spoke over simultaneous outbursts in chorus with 
a cacophony of girls

           Another video posted on my social media 

account is a slow approach to an ancient live oak several years ago. The male cicada 
wails out of the ground of periodic dog days. Layering the phone call with 
intermittent whine maps a transitive noisescape from 
an old living room out into the greenbelt. The complaint floor gives out a laugh’s 
short attack. Intermittent bitter release high out into the same-old