Aural Fiction 1 (pt. 2)

All around the plaza the figures, each in their own time but more or less together, first become aware of their own rapid breaths gradually slowing, as each begin to relax into the change that has occurred, the silence too gradually punctuated before erased, as breaths become whispers between one or two figures, then voices among many. All now are less afraid, more curious than before. Delighted to see that the black pool is so clear and shiny that it reflects all like a mirror, their delight is further enhanced to discover that it is solid as stone, untarnished by any shoe which steps back out onto the plaza. Hesitant, moving slowly at first, the figures approach the iridescent leaves once again, their footsteps gathering pace as they learn their steps produce a dull and eerie ringing like scaffold on carpeted concrete, causing each to dance and skip about the surface playfully, enjoying their sound-making, each ring seemingly unique to the weight of each figure.
As their play subsides, one figure then makes their way toward one of the iridescent leaves, approaching it cautiously, detecting a slight hissing sound which grows imperceptibly louder as they draw closer, causing them to follow the sound with their eyes to determine the cause. Focusing at last upon a tiny slit near the tip of the stem, only slightly darker than the whole, the leaf appears to drawing air inside it, like a punctured inflatable drawing in water. Before the figure can wonder at the cause however, the hissing stops abruptly, and from all sides of the plaza anguished cries issue from the figures around the plaza. Each, and himself in terror included, have suddenly and without a sound, sunk knee-deep into the black surface, trapped fast. Crying out, their cries fix too, each held horribly in a single senseless and relentless pitch, air escaping their lungs continuously. Unable to move, their torsos shift and buck, their arms flailing wildly, their eyes and mouths wide open, transfixed in a continuous scream which defies their reason. Sinking now deeper into the black mirror, their infinitesimal decline is marked by a change in their wails, which shifting from one vowel to another, then by progressive increments also consonants, and strings of both, every word ever uttered spills from their mouths in an incessant and hideous torrent of noise. Languages old and new, words sublime and banal, issue forth from every mouth, never to be repeated, at a hellish and horrifying speed. Each figure, sinks deeper and deeper, until head tilted back are but mouths and nose above the black, all their language used up, breathless, silenced, consumed. Frozen there, held by whatever force has them, what remains of them grows grey, ashen.
The leaves too, immobile, still about the plaza, now hum once more, quietly this time, changing in pitch as they change in appearance too. Each simultaneously fades from their opaque iridescence until clear, the pitch of each hum imperceptibly altering, until a phasing of sorts is produced in the plaza. As it does so, the inky mirror retracts from beneath each leaf, drawn to each of the open mouths of the figures, at first dribbling then flowing inside the silent frozen figures, which grow greyer, stonier, now all but brick and mortar once more. The transparency of the leaves continues unabated, as they vanish slowly, reduced to their atoms, until each appears to have disappeared, the hum now unnoticeable, distant. The plaza now much as it was save for a slight hum from an unknown source and the occasional breath of air.    

Found Text 1 (22/06/18)

The interference of all silence. The sound of a machine, a scratch, dirt or its image. The radio at night, something - work - somewhere else is being done and it does not need to be done by me and it is being done by me. I have left my body. I am not thinking, no privilege. A flag is flying and there is welding, like smoking, like somebody else smoking. Two things are happening at once. That's all. It is an equivalence that is entirely ordinary. Reorganised suspension. Here exactly at this intersection it is the measure of me. I am - thrown. Listen. Chance is heard and I am changed. Begin again.


excerpt from: "(I am) For the Birds (2013)" - Ian White with Jimmy Robert, Any Frame Is A Thrown Voice at Camden Arts Centre, London.

Aural Fiction 1 (pt.1)

A multitude of small dried leaves swept up and blown by a soft wind across a tiled plaza. Rustling with the ebb and flow of small gusts which buffet them back and forth, they swirl then halt sporadically, scritch-scratching the stone.
Gathered up on one side of the plaza against a far wall, a longer gust then lifts a clump of leaves into the air and casts them up, crackling. At their peak they seem to be held momentarily before they rapidly grow monstrous in size, each about a metre square or thereabouts, pushing against one another with a dull jostling producing a shift and lowering of pitch in their crackle akin now more to heavy branches than of leaves. Their colour alters too; the dull greys and browns now have lustre, speckled with oxidized oranges and dirtied reds, their veined curled and wafer-thin bodies slowly solidifying, as of crude metals, sheaves of raw, oxidized and wrought iron. Weightless when launched into the air their suspension is now subdued, so that they now groan and then crash noisily down. Some clang into one another as they smash together, others flung further afield, tumble and tear through the tiles with terrible violence, splintering and scattering clattering shattered brick, until each come to a cratered rest lodged like misshapen meteors after a shower.
Out of the stillness that descends, figures appear on all sides of the plaza, awe-struck and curious as to what has occurred here. One or two step down on to the tiled floor, hesitant and cautious, their voices low, furtive, their eyes at their feet inspecting the debris around them which softly crunches underfoot. A cry from one makes all movement stop, all eyes cast in that direction toward a single leaf which appears to be brightening, whitening slowly and producing a quiet metallic buzzing like a tattooist's needle. As all colour drains from the leaf, the buzzing gradually grows in volume, producing murmurs of bewilderment which gather in groups from the figures and then disperse to others in the plaza, which too are all gradually drowned out. When another cry is heard all eyes and heads turn rapidly to it's source, then almost simultaneously toward which the outstretched finger points, to see that beneath the leaf the smashed tiles and bricks are darkening, first greying to a smooth and faultless powder then softening moistening further, and blackening to form an opaque and inky puddle which grows steadily, pooling, rippling out, consuming more tiles by the same process. Silent, and in stark contrast in both sight and sound to the leaf above it which is now a brilliant, almost luminescent white and producing its relentless drone, the pool meets and joins seamlessly with those of others that have formed unnoticed beneath all the leaves in the plaza, their own colour and noise equal to the first. Frightened, the figures hasten and retreat, those stood in the plaza stepping backward clumsily, hands reaching blindly before finding safety behind the far wall which is somehow immune and halts the spread like a firebreak, containing it until the plaza floor is nought but black, all the leaves a brilliant arid white and the drone now deafening. Time passes unnoticed: the figures held at the edge of plaza are transfixed, uncomprehending, so that when suddenly all is still and stony silence, no one moves, no one speaks, no one knows what was or what is next.

To be continued...       


    

Reflection 2

It's been a long time since my last post here, several months in fact. On the 2nd of February I began another Memory Mix, not dissimilar in style to those I'd previously written about, a 4-channel composition, but this time imagining certain effects added to each:

1

A faulty fluorescent light. It blinks lazily once turned on seemingly deciding whether to light or not. When it is momentarily illuminated it's hollow plunk resonates with a metallic ring which is somehow out of place for glass and light. Flickering again soon after a sustained hum into a sustained light, the pitch of the hum drops before the hollow plunk returns, rings out again, and the process is repeated.

FX: Huge reverb with plenty of delay on the plunks.

2

A huge metal door to a warehouse. Concertina in style it rarely opens save occasionally when something larger than a person must leave. On such an occasion a massive screeching rents the air as the steel door folds noisily back on itself scraping the coarse concrete floor. Obliterating all other sounds for the duration of it's movement, it's harsh and anguished scream penetrates the listener like a knife to the ribs.

FX: Repeated every 16 steps with gradual and incremental distortion.

3

Flagpoles on a quay. Whipped and buffeted in the gusts of wind that sweep along the promenade, their flags slap and clap chaotically. Standing in parallel to the poles and at a close distance the listener can also discern a percussive clatter and metallic ring where metal washers securing each flag by a rope strike the pole repeatedly. Rotating on the spot and orientating one's listening ears slightly from left to right gives the illusion of phasing echoes.

FX: Shifts in pitch on the echoes.

*****

Shortly after writing that I abandoned this text. Since then I haven't written another word in my journal. Why, you might ask? Well, for a number of reasons, but at the time back in February the main reason was further dissatisfaction with writing in this way, and an inability to write about that dissatisfaction too. Copying out that portion just now I'm struck with how unimaginative it is as much as anything else - that it is the written equivalent of a field recording, (and no disrespect to field recordists) but this isn't what interests me, or rather that I feel that writing in this way goes nowhere, in that it just reproduces or tries to reproduce an experience, which it invariably and inevitably also fails to do satisfactorily. Even with the inclusion of an imaginary effect to direct the reader-listener to something else, it's still essentially a record of a memory altered in such a way that is recognisable in the realm of a treated field recording or composition, and that's not a direction I want to go in.

At that time I also was reading Jason Khan's In Place (Errant Bodies Press, Audio Issues Vol. 6, 2015) and while I enjoyed both Khan's aural and visual texts recording the places he visited I was frustrated by the lack of reflection or enquiry into how he felt about what he heard so as to guide my own reading-listening. And too, I couldn't help but feel a similar dissatisfaction in this incomplete transfer of experience, that what was missing is what might interest me more, or might at least direct me toward what I feel is lacking in my own texts. While I did find the doubling or multiplying of experience in reading one sonorous experience while listening to my own place while I read interesting, that experience of mine seemed slightly at odds with Khan's intentions I felt, and propelled me to read less of him and instead listen more to me.

Turning then from reading that book I did what I ordinarily do when I need ideas and I read fiction instead, this time reading A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Gallery Beggar Press, 2013). An incredible, thought-provoking, moving and brutal novel, it's flow-of-consciousness first-person style of narration is arresting and inventive. What struck me most about it with regard to what I read in comparison to Khan's book, is that there was real art here, that it effected me in such a way that not only was I compelled to read more, devouring pages and pages at a time in listening to it's continuous interior monologue, but that McBride's fictional character in the writing that was conveyed showed more of an experience of a person to me than Khan's factual and literal descriptions of sounds, sights and places.

While I was in London when I began A Girl..., I was in the US visiting my fiancee Jennie when I finished it. By this point in March I was still thinking about what I might write here, but frankly I see Jennie so little that I didn't dwell on writing much, or when I did, it felt like time should be better spent experiencing rather than writing about the experience. This brings me to another reason why I stopped writing and that is that I need certain conditions to write. These conditions to write are also quite different from those I need to work - that is art work made in the studio - and too for that matter those times when I either cannot work or I must or want to do nothing ie. not work. When I was with Jennie for example, I thought about ideas occasionally but generally not working was the most imperative thing, or better still, that being with her, how she inspires me to enjoy and experience all that there was to do in the now of her company, that was the most important thing.

Similarly since then, when in paid employment I've mostly looked toward having time to work in the studio, and while I have often had the time to write while at work or during my commute, again these aren't the best conditions for writing I feel. In fact, what I've become most aware of since all this time has passed is that the best conditions for me to write is after a period of silence, of not writing for a long while. That not only do I have more to say, and set out in a legible and logical way (which the words have hitherto been all fragmented and confused) but that the act of writing whether I scrawl and scribble with pen and paper or bash and hammer these keys on my laptop, is done so at a time perhaps when I need to listen to myself and collect my thoughts and my ideas together, and not so much as an act of catharsis but more as the most immediate means to address and interrogate myself; to quieten the noise and chatter (and to some extent an anger at the muteness of the other selves) within me and channel these thoughts and feelings productively, entering into a meaningful dialogue.

Of course I still have my (self)doubts and I can't altogether reconcile the feeling that blogging or sharing my thoughts in a public forum online like this isn't all that far removed from daubing graffiti on a wall or standing on a soapbox at Speaker's Corner spouting nonsense to passer's-by, but it does however continue to press me to consider what I experience and reconsider those things I think and feel. I still don't know where my reading, my research, or this continual interrogation of listening through writing will lead me, but I do still continue to feel that it's important to do so, if only after periods of not writing and not posting. I now have some ideas of what I can and want to explore with my writing in future but also too an appreciation that I will write these when I'm ready and not before. That there are also other things to read, do, and enjoy, with company or alone, or not to do anything, and each of these things can and do contribute to my research even if they don't appear to do so. I shouldn't feel compelled to write for the sake of writing something but do so only when I have something I need to say in words because that's the best or only way. And besides, should anyone read or keep track of what I post, I respect that their time is precious to them too, so periods of not reading what I write is probably wise too! I will write again, I just don't know when or about what, and that's a good thing I think. More time for people, places, things.. And of course, listening too.

Memory Mix 3 (Octophonic)

1

Hail stones falling on the roof of an attic. Alerted first by the odd one or two that thunk loudly on the roof tiles in the relative silence up here, soon several fall in quick succession. A sort of sweeping clattering ensues as the storm grows in intensity as it concentrating all it's violent energy on this one roof, hammering in irregular targets above my head. Those stones falling on the single solitary skylight adds a fragile ring to the thundering above, and which as the storm swiftly passes and the onslaught abates, now tinkles, ebbs away before quietening once again.

2

In an office doing data entry with a group of other temps. Easily distracted from our mundane task, I attune my ears to our fingers typing on the keyboards. Patterns and rhythms seemingly emerge intermittently before being absorbed into a chaos of keystrokes, dulled digit taps, mouse clicks which pause and pick up pace seemingly at random. These sounds pause and repeat endlessly, just as my own efforts appear first to lead loudly, then obediently follow, before also then becoming absorbed.

3

A bluebottle fly caught in the recess between the outer and inner windows of my studio. It's buzzing entirely silenced I'm alerted to its presence by the muted thumping as it attempts to escape. Flying repeatedly into the panes of glass, and pausing frequently, then renewing its assault, the fly continues to vainly search for a way beyond the invisible obstacle. Gradually, and painfully, pitifully, these attempts soon wane in enthusiasm before eventually fading altogether. The fly lies dead.

4

A woman in high-heels dashing, or I should say shuffling, quickly across the marble concourse of a station. The natural reverb of the vaulted roof carries the sound far and wide around the hall, her steps producing a series of irregular click-clacking as she runs to catch her train. Stopping midway to adjust one heel on her ankle, she resumes her pace almost at a stagger, skidding in a scuffling recovered stumble, which adds a note of drama to the sound. Pausing briefly to catch her balance, foot firmly forward she shuffles loudly on, stamping the surface again and again and again.

5

A tap dripping in a flat. Impossible to halt completely (no matter how hard I try!), one can alter only the frequency and intensity of the drips into the the deep metallic basin. Occasionally plates, bowls, mugs may temporarily adjust it's purring patter with the cliche splish splash plop or plink. One afternoon, irritated by this relentless pissing of time, I adjust the angle of the tap so the water quietly trickles down the rim. Delighted at first by the peace that descends, I soon discover as the sink gurgles and glugs that this quiet now too drains away.

6

A man on crutches easing himself along the street. Moving in an irregular rocking motion, puffing slightly, straining on his weight, the crutches squeak, rattle creak on each step forward, with a muted sound somewhere between hard plastic and soft metal. Turning his head now, the man sees a bus approaching, and picking up his pace swings himself toward the stop some distance ahead. Passing him on the kerb the bus shows no sign of slowing, continuing it's journey instead without stopping. Hurried, the man eventually does reach the stop, where he sits and flops, and casting the crutches to the floor in a pathetic and careless clatter he utters a breathless "Fuck."

7

The indicator on my mother's car. It never fails to ignite a rhythm in my mind; it's thwick-clicking thwick-click, providing a precise and measured interval to all the other noises. It's cold and frosty this morning so Mum puts on first the heating - a welcome warm and airy hiss - followed by the windscreen wipers which groan across the glass. Shaving a little ice from the sheet with each shuddering stagger as it skates back and forth, it adds a rubbery cello to the car's composition, which when the car turns the indicator curiously complements.

8

A truck with loose iron chains dangling from a cradle for carrying a skip. As it turns a corner sharply at a junction, the chains clang noisily against the metal cradle like an anchor against a ship. As the truck straightens its path the chains flail more wildly, colliding with each other in a dulled clack and chunky chink, before striking the cradle again with a loud bang. Sounding two or three times as it passes down the street, I imagine the driver a composer listening and improvising to every jolt, turn, and halt.

Memory Mix 2 (Quadraphonic)

1

Sitting in a train carriage aware of a woman to my right having a tearful conversation on her mobile phone. She gives clipped agitated answers to unknown questions while coughing, crying, and pleading with the caller. She sobs throughout the call, tears streaming down her face, evidently very distressed. The caller evidently ends the dialogue angrily and swiftly leaving the woman shaking, sobbing uncontrollably. After a few minutes I lean across the aisle offering her a pack of tissues enquiring if she is okay. Turning slowly, seemingly only now aware of her very public position, she smiles slightly and takes the tissues. She opens them furtively, and with the aid of a pocket mirror from her bag, dabs one tissue to her eyes and cheeks and mouth where her make-up has run. She discards this and then takes another. She then blows her nose in a series of revolting gurgling snorts, opening up the tissue between expulsions to inspect the contents. Both the sound of her blows and the visual result she displays turns my stomach so that I look away in disgust my seat creaking as I move, her actions still visible to me in the reflection of the carriage window. Thankfully moments later the train arrives at my destination but as I get up to leave she turns to me and hands me a folded tissue with her number written on it. I smile awkwardly disembarking, still disgusted, unable to meet her gaze at the window. As soon as the train is out of sight I discard the tissue.

2

As a child attending another boy's birthday party. Sat around a table with other children from my class at school, we are all eating snacks and party food, swilling fizzy drinks; loud voices, music: noise. The kid who's birthday it is (we are all no more than nine or ten years old), is greatly excited, laughing, joking, shouting at us all across the table and above our din. It is his day after all. At some point he gets to his feet and laughing with his mouth open I become transfixed on watching the crushed food inside his mouth become a lurid coloured paste which he continually adds to as he laughs. Slowly my attention shifts away from his guffaws, and I realise that I have long-since stopped eating, the noise of the room some how diminished outside of myself now just as my thoughts inside have been silenced. All I can do is watch and listen to him closely and he alone, and as he repeatedly tilts his head back as he chews, chomps and fills his face; things going into and sounds coming out of his mouth. Then I watch in horror as a thin trickle of green snot dribbles from one nostril into his gaping mirthful maw, mixing with his food. At that moment I vomit violently which is met with a universal and mocking laughter from all present which resounds and reverberates in my memory long after it has actually occurred. To this day the memory of this haunts me still.

3

On a metro train headed for Queens, New York, stationary, waiting beside the platform. The train is quite crowded with lots of disgruntled passengers due to the unexplained lack of movement from the train. Sat beside me, Jennie is checking her phone for alternative routes, irritated by yet another delay and our lack of remaining time in the city. A garbled message interrupts the general hubbub on the train briefly, something to do with the delay no doubt, but I can't understand what was said. I turn my attention instead to two New Yorkers sat opposite, women seemingly friends who appear to be discussing someone. I can't determine who from what they say and their thick accents but from their dismissive demeanor and their casual and repeated swearing I assume it's a man they know. Momentarily disinterested in this, I listen to several screeching trains pass us on other tracks in the station, the faint clatter patter and murmur of people on the platforms, snippets of conversations within the carriage, before once again finding my attention drawn to one of the women opposite, the one furthest from me. Between trading insults with her friend, she regularly turns her body to face front, staring blankly beneath her baseball cap, and then proceed to sniff deeply, noisily, followed by a chewing of her gum with an open mouth and a smack of the lips. This action she repeats in sequence often, like it's a tic or a learned response to her friend's reactions to her comments, and it's in this repetition that I find my attention drawn and also it's abhorrence.

4

At a Francisco Lopez gig at Cafe Oto. Jennie and I sit opposite where Lopez will perform facing us. The audience is circled around Lopez in the centre with their backs to him in two rows, and in several rows facing the opposite direction on several sides of this. Waiting patiently the gig to begin Jennie and I both note that a man behind us evidently has an awful cold causing him to frequently sniff and blow his nose. We consider moving seats but as the venue has greatly filled our options are now limited so we decide to stay put and ignore it the best we can. Having listened to Lopez extol on how our lack of sight will be more conducive to listening, we don our blindfolds and the venue is plunged into darkness. Lopez plays a complex surround sound mix of crisp electronics, angular rhythmic industrial noise, and amplified natural sounds which shoot, swirl and sweep about us building and demolishing an architecture of fragmented narratives. Initially I'm irked by the intrusion of the man's sniffing behind us, noticeable only really in the silences and quieter sections, or the pauses between pieces. Gradually however, I come to listen attentively to his input, almost anticipating it, and as I do so, I also become more aware of other sounds; the tinkle of glasses at the bar, passing cars and people in the street outside, Jennie breathing, our weight shifting in our creaking chairs, other people with coughs and colds near and far. And it's not without some irony that I also consider Lopez' statement again in the terms that without the visual spectacle of his performance with which to also focus one's listening, my attention may be inclined instead not to recordings but to listening to my physical now, my immediate environment.     

Memory Mix 1

 

Left Ear 

Rummaging through a box of discounted old LP's in a used music shop somewhere in London. Finding an unlabelled record in a crinkled plastic sleeve which is yellowed and fatigued and somewhat stiff, I'm intrigued as what it might be.  Removing the sleeve, I stuff it under my arm, it crunching slightly, as I put it on the record deck. Visibly filthy and covered in scratches, I watch as a wedge of fluff is ploughed out of the groove by the needle as it jumps and rocks on the vinyl. Lifting the solitary headphone to my ear, what little I discern of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is accompanied by a creaking grinding and the hissing whispers of decades and dust, as if gaseous clouds of the stuff have enveloped the piano in a fog.

Right Ear

Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" piped into the Men's lavatories in Departures at Heathrow Terminal 5. Aside from a quick succession of men at the urinals, familiar sounds of short bursts of hand-dryers and running taps, several voices are occasionally heard, their words indistinct. Cubicle doors are often open and shut with some violence, the automatic flushing shifting in and out of phase. In the cubicle next to mine a man audibly groans and gasps as, presumably, he shits. The long drawn out succession of splashes followed by a brief, high-pitched and squeaking fart. More splashes follow, again and again, each delivered with some force. The man muttering something, I hear him curse under his breath: "Fucking airline food."

Reflection 1

Several days have passed since my last post. There were sounds that I listened to, that I could have recorded, wrote about, but something held me back. Reflecting on what I've written so far, I feel like I'm retreading familiar territory - this is my second blog - not just in applying pen to paper, eking out another few meagre words to fill some lines in my book, or for that matter simply pricking one's ears. In so doing I'm returning to a place and time long since passed. Observations was an early attempt to really explore the mixing of auditory and visual perception, using self-written texts and sound. Now in 2018, I'm asking myself why have I returned to this point? why this obsession with this 'auralvision' of ideas, why do they never seem to leave me, satisfy my curiosity, reach a conclusion in my work now or since? (and while a "conclusion" is perhaps unwanted) I keep asking myself if whether the dissatisfaction I feel with regard to my work stems from the pursuit of these ideas? And either way, and given that with another passing year I'm reminded of the limited duration afforded me, should I not pursue work that excites me more, breaks into new territory unfettered by conceptual and theoretical concerns, or even ask whether it's work or research? One's preoccupations have after all a habit of whispering into one's work regardless, but that said I do feel that I need to alter course here, if only to breathe new life into my work and renew optimism into myself. And write again too, but about listening in a different way.

A young man, talking on his mobile phone

while sat in the injuries unit in A&E,
apparently addressing another how best to 'seduce' a woman they know.

Either oblivious to,
or more likely caring little (from how he arrogantly expresses himself)
that other patients can hear him,
he coaxes his "neo-liberal" friend,
pressing him to ignore any occasion when she may reject him adding,
that "No doesn't mean no,"
he should always persist, "backing her into a corner" to "win through,"
"The result is the same..."

Laughing then - it's unclear whether to himself or with the caller - he adds:
"And if it'll sweeten the deal, you can use that #metoo to your advantage,"
"she's a crazy feminist, isn't she?!"

A sort of sneering laughter follows, as he sniffs,
Looking then with contempt at those around him, he clears his throat, sniffs again.
As at the same time I can feel the other listeners around me listening intently,
in a sort of aura of disgust which has permeated the room,
watching the silence between his words,
suggesting a collective desire for an unpleasant violence to befall him.
I wonder too if this man has sisters, a mother, daughters of his own,
What they would make of his 'advice'? and what might they do to hear him?
Called away then by a doctor, he hangs up without a word and strides away,
The room audibly and visibly relaxes,
As it once had been tense, contracted,
now it swells, excluding that man forever.

Foreign students, talking amongst themselves

so free, easy, comfortable
with their words for themselves.
Their world in their words,
their voices relaxed,
not loud, not quiet,
their privacy assumed? assured?

Listening in
I wonder who else must do the same -
surely someone recognises?
surely someone understands?
surely someone knows?
And like me, smiles to themself
to be privy to a word here and there?

Or simply they hear the smiles
behind the words?
Always the same
despite the language -
accent, dialect, delivery -

What does any group of people talk about happily?

A child screaming; inconsolable

Scream against fear,
Against hate,
Against prejudice,
Scream against pain,
Against violence,
Against abuse,
Against poverty,
Scream against cruelty,
Against this world

Scream against pollution,
Against the destruction,
of forests, oceans, air
Scream against the horror,
of concrete, metal, plastic

Piss and shit yourself
And scream against it all
Cough and vomit up your food
And scream against them all

Scream and scream and scream
Against them that plug their ears, scream
Against them that close their eyes, scream
Against them that shut their mouths, scream
Against them that would silence you, scream.

Never stop screaming.