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.