"AM I HAPPY, LISTENING_"
[23/9/2024]Excerpt written after listening to Ricky Eat Acid's "am i happy, singing_" at the park.
A raw composition of brain activity. Strings plucked and then crystallized, sparks flying between neurons with no sound made. But the sound is heard. The heart of a cat beats out of tune, out of sync with mine, but it is felt on my own, in my chest. Dancing bells in dappled sunlight are free, unbound - then, in another moment are cut off with a glance across a different way. The brain wipes the moment but the brush remembers, the board remembers underneath new ink, new chalk. Glittering leaves rustle with the sound of piano, but they don't know of the piano. Neither do I. Every moment, every person around me, it is composition. Moments that somehow form together into sometimes awkward, sometimes out-of-tune, oftentimes unknown songs. Songs that are unknown as they are not yet made, and will never be made again. They form a polyrhythm, a performance teetering on the abstract and formless nature of all things under the sun that is life and the sheet of stars that is death. It is not done with performance direction, but it is done with intention. Watch the sunflower blow in time with the reed; their hearts move close together, in the same wind. But even as they are untouching, their gentle murmurations overlap, two instruments with distinct chords and progressions sharing in the same air: music. One will be gone and so will the other, but what I see is heard in the folds of my brain, and what they play is shared to me too. To watch, to listen, to know, if only for a moment. Their voice is loud, and heard. Their fingers play as they feel the heat of the sun through overcast clouds, as both are what they will always know. All at once it is known, it is gone; birds above the eye, grass below the feet. One has flown and the other reaches for that same sky the crow has already touched, navigated, swam in and swims in now. Every time it reaches its arms up high, it must know it will not leap out of ground and join the crow in harmony on the wind. But the crow can come down and sit with the grass instead. Does the grass feel jealousy; does the crow feel pride? Neither feels none; both reach upwards still, and feel the sun upon their backs and the dew of the morning as it comes again, as it always does. They are known, but how often do we listen to the hummed notes of the blades of grass? A thousand-thousand-thousand little ones standing tall, stretching towards the sun, all swaying in unison? Why cut them down in their efforts to become tall and feel warmth, to cherish it? What is a tune if it only becomes noise, layered beneath the sound of all else, not intertwined in the tangle, but below it? Turn your ear to the sound that reverberates through all strings as they are plucked: A tone. A tune. A song. A dance. A passion. A noise. Vibrating, a frequency made and soon gone, only heard if it is listened to. It is an honor to hear it, to be there when the note sounds crisp, cleanly, with the love we all desire play.