{"id":87614855,"date":"2011-05-03T23:38:35","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T07:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/?p=87614855"},"modified":"2023-05-04T08:12:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T16:12:06","slug":"may-be-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/?p=87614855","title":{"rendered":"May-Be: Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He sits, listening to it all, not knowing what he’s listening for.\u00a0 A large piece of off-market audio equipment and an alarming array of hand-made enhancements returns his tension, rippling beneath his touch as he isolates and reaches into the maelstrom over and over again.\u00a0 In a previous life, over a decade ago, he was a composer.\u00a0 Now music finds him.\u00a0 Hunts him.\u00a0 Berates him when he leaves to scavenge in the collapsed department store he was installed into three months ago.<\/p>\n

Symphonies of the thousands of conversations happening across the switch form ocean waves.\u00a0 February breakup clusters cause raging windstorms.\u00a0 Twilight PBX traversal is the sound of duck armies digging trenches using rubber shovels.\u00a0 “When are you coming home, dad?” can be picked out through the chorusing.\u00a0 Kids.\u00a0 There’s still kids somewhere.<\/p>\n

When he’s done, he gets to see his own again, they said.<\/p>\n

He listens for them, too.\u00a0 He’s heard friends planning heartbreakingly normal things.\u00a0 But mostly he listens for the ones he’s here for – the web he’s been tasked to pull out of the wind.\u00a0 Evil people, he’s told.\u00a0 People who’ve done terrible things.\u00a0 People who will do unspeakable things.\u00a0 People who will speak of these things first, and can be heard when they do, and will sound wrong when they do.<\/p>\n

There’s been recordings for which he’s been told he’s doing really well, that they’re almost done here, that he can go home soon.\u00a0 There’s been some false alarms that have brought some long sit down discussions with a wall that shows passing clouds when he speaks to it.\u00a0 He saw an actual teddybear in one of those clouds once – he’s sure of it.\u00a0 The wall talks back, but the voice is pure.\u00a0 Too pure.\u00a0 The sound of the conferencing room, not the sound of a voice.\u00a0 Having a conversation with Alvin Lucier<\/a> would end up being like this sometimes.<\/p>\n

His hand hovered above the steel wheel of the timeline, rolling millimetres beneath his fingertips at a steady 33 1\/3rd RPM.<\/p>\n

This afternoon, he heard something that was wrong in the spectrum.\u00a0 No, not wrong.\u00a0 Off.\u00a0 Funny.\u00a0 Foolish.\u00a0 Playful.<\/p>\n

He didn’t record it, but memorized the range: 8675hz.\u00a0 Someone was playing with the advertising flow to something.\u00a0 Strictly prohibited.\u00a0 Off-band.\u00a0 Not often, and not obvious.\u00a0 Just enough to be interesting.<\/p>\n

Just enough to make people check their timepieces before instantly forgetting what the current time is.\u00a0 Make them call on old friends for no reason – just to hear a friendly voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He sits, listening to it all, not knowing what he’s listening for.\u00a0 A large piece of off-market audio equipment and an alarming array of hand-made enhancements returns his tension, rippling beneath his touch as he isolates and reaches into the maelstrom over and over again.\u00a0 In a previous life, over a decade ago, he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87614855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-not-really"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87614855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87614855"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87614855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87615027,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87614855\/revisions\/87615027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87614855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87614855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87614855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}