The old man, his face permanently etched with the wrinkles of a smile, slowly lifted his glass to his lips and drank fully of its contents, while watching over its edge as a small group of children frolicked out in the lawn. The old lady turned to him and gazed at him through the tinted lenses of her sunglasses, her lips parting in a smile. As the old man watched, one of the children broke free from her playmates and began running towards him, her pale blonde hair trailing behind her fair face as she raced across the lawn.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” she shouted as she ran, her face flushed with the exertion, “Grandpa! Thomas said…” A sympathetic wind carried the rest of her words away from the old woman’s ears, as if to spare her from their barbs.

The old man gently squeezed her hand and relinquished to the servant android his now empty glass. With his free hand he motioned the children over to his side. The old woman watched with glistening eyes as the three remaining children came bounding across the lawn and settled down in the verdant grass at her feet. Slowly she pulled her hand from her partner’s loving grasp and brushed back a lock of white hair that had wistfully strayed down to caress her face. A stiff gust of wind made an appearance, loudly rattling the slowly dying leaves of the nearby oak trees. Waiting for the din to relent, the old man smiled down at his grandchildren, squirming in childish impatience.

One could see the clouds that had gathered on the horizon making their approach in the scene reflected in the old woman’s glasses. And behind their lenses, where none could see, great tears welled in her eyes as she stared blankly at an area of grass directly over the shoulder of the nearest child. As the old man at her side began telling his tale of loss and misery, and his betrayal of nature in committing the ultimate sin, the old woman pulled inward until all outside stimulus was lost to the sound of her own thoughts. Here, in the quiet roar of the chaos that is our conscious mind, she played out the story as it was known to her. The accident. The lost wife and child. The experiments and sins against nature. And ultimately, the replacement of love lost.

As the old man’s words fell upon her deaf ears, the old woman began, once again, sorting through her memories, trying to remember back to the beginning. As she had so often in the past, she began to lose the distinction between her actual memories and the memories of the stories told to her about the woman she had replaced. As much as the old man had assured her, over all their years together, that those memories were really hers to hold and cherish, the old woman had always felt like a usurper. A mere placeholder, designed to fulfill a function with which she had never completely grown comfortable. Holding a child that was not her own. Being loved by, and eventually growing to love, a man who had built her for that purpose.

The old woman began a familiar dialog, a fight between the warring factions of her conscience. For as long as she had been alive, she had been living with a demon that had been slowly gnawing away at her heart and soul. At the best of times, she could keep its hunger at bay for weeks. At the worst of times, it was all she could do to get up and face the children that she had been created to raise as her own. She recalled nights of sobbing quietly into one pillow or another, in one house or another, to relieve the stress of the charade that she was living. One side of her conscience, always devoted to the honesty and the depth and passion of her partner’s love, arguing that she had not been created to perform duties, rather to be loved. The other side of her conscience, bitter at the slight of being forced to care for a family for which she may never have had honest feelings, arguing that she may have found a better life for herself had she been given the opportunity.

Inevitably her better half won each conflict. The nature of her existence notwithstanding, she still carried the personality traits of the woman she had replaced. Among which was a capacity for great compassion and sympathy. She reasoned with the embittered division, desperately trying to rationalize her partner’s actions and quell the dissention of her inner demons with pleas of sympathy for his plight. For a time she would think them assuaged and the happiness of her smile would glint in her sapphire blue eyes. Only later to realize that she had merely deluded herself into believing that her doubts and fears would ever allow her a moment of happiness. That the thoughts of lives that she could have lived would forever percolate into her consciousness, festering like the rancid boils of a tropical infection: a pestilence that riddled her life with grief and shame.

The old woman often found herself scolding such thoughts. She did genuinely love the man who created her. She did genuinely empathize with his suffering and understood what pain had driven him to the depths of depravity from which she was borne. And while she fought valiantly for the opportunity to love him as thoroughly and unconditionally as the woman she replaced, she knew that she could not. Not while a part of her would question his right to impose upon her the life that he wanted her to assume.

The wind picked up again, violently tossing about the hair of all those in attendance that autumn afternoon. The old man was winding down his lavish recollection of a much earlier life, subtly embellished where memory failed to fully recall all the details. The soft creaking thud of the servant android returning, the old man’s glass now refilled, brought the old woman out of her reverie. Behind the lenses of her sunglasses, where none could see, she blinked away the last remnants of tears. Reflected in those same lenses, one could see that the clouds had not abated, nor desisted in their march across the sky. The wind whipped strands of white hair around her face; some to fly freely and others to cling to cheeks soaked with the trails of tears. The old woman brushed her hair back again and, with the back of her hand, wiped from her cheeks the evidence of her suffering. An ice cube, slowly melting in the sun, lost its tenuous hold against the inside of her glass and slipped free of its perch, loudly resettling against another piece of ice, blissfully ignorant that it was destined to melt away altogether. The old woman sniffled almost inaudibly and reached out for her partner’s hand. Without hesitation, he clasped her hand, intertwining his gnarled fingers with hers.

“Alright, my little dears,” the old man said concluding his story and looking at each of their glowing faces individually, “You need to get inside the house. There’s a storm coming.”

“Awww!” they groaned simultaneously. “Five more minutes, please?”

“Five more minutes.” the old man responded with a smile. His audience, undaunted by the knowledge they now possessed, displayed no restraint in leaping up and racing away from the couple to enjoy their last bit of freedom under the waning autumn sun.

And as they sat on the lawn, watching the grandchildren play, she asked him, “Any regrets?” He smiled as he kissed her hand and said, “None.”

Concentration.

She brushed back from his face a lock his blonde hair and gave him a wan smile that he could not see. She had known the day would come when she would have to leave. The fighting had not robbed her of the love she felt for him, but even her love was not enough to save their relationship. The strain of their financial situation had levied a mighty toll on them both; wearing equally thin her nerves and his patience. After the first fight she had called her sister, who offered both a shoulder on which she could cry, and a bed into which she could escape her plight. She had declined, insisting that things would get better.

Insisting.

As quietly as possible, she slid her legs out from under the down comforter they had purchased when they first moved in together. Her mind took the opportunity to dredge up a memory of that ragged and threadbare blanket he was using when they first met, and she recalled how the heat of their bodies culled from it a faint scent of mildew. It was a painful memory of happy moments to be experienced again nevermore. Her mind could be sinister in that regard. By the light of an early dawn pouring in the bedroom window, she stared down at her long legs; the smooth skin broken by three days worth of hair growth.

Broken.

Standing, she allowed herself one last lingering look at him before summoning the courage and determination she needed to follow through on her sister's offer. She took her first step and the sudden shock of pain in her heart threatened to bring her to her knees. She set her face with a mask of resolve, a malignant sort of resignation that her path was set; her decision immutable. Each step brought another burst of agony, rending a hole that stretched from the pit of her stomach up through her chest, leaving her depleted. She hastened her pace, afraid that her courage would flee if she did not, and grabbed the bag she had furtively packed the night before. With a deep, shuddering breath, she slipped out the front door into the brisk morning air, and set off for the bus stop: hoping, praying that she had made the right decision.

His feet, clad in slippers that were as comfortable as they were practical in the sweltering heat of the summer, shuffled along of their own accord; remembering a path that he had traced daily for as long as he could recall. His mouth hung slightly agape, breath becoming ragged as his path turned uphill. The air whipped up around him, cut in twain by another salvo of automobiles, sending his white hair swirling about his head like a thousand tiny earthworms floundering in the mud. Under his breath he cursed the foolishness of youth, and the speed at which it traveled.

Haste and impatience: the progenitors of speed. And what had the foolhardiness of speed ever brought this world, the old man wondered. Naught but recklessness and grief. Worse yet, the world had seemingly forgotten that there was a time when things moved at a pace that allowed for consideration; a pace that favored deliberation. No one remembered how the world of his youth was a better place. A place of kindness instead of abandon. A place where mistakes were wrought, lessons were learned and misdeeds corrected. Not this abomination of society he had survived to see; where people leap-frogged at breakneck velocity from one mistake to the next, leaving in their wake a swath of destruction for which no one accounted.

He was sick, nearly to death, of speed.

His shuffling feet halted at the intersection, while he contorted his torso to bring his face around to see the traffic signal. With the patience of age; the patience of those for whom no destination warrants haste, least of all that final of destinations, he awaited the traffic signal. Contorted; aged; broken; the old man bemoaned that fate or God, or whatever, had seen fit to let him live long enough to suffer the indignities of an impatient world.

The traffic signal turned, and the old man slowly set out into the crosswalk, his creaking wire shopping trolley in tow. At his pace. In his time. The rest of the world be damned.

You know. So you can update your calendars, and all.

Seattle creative arts center
2601 NW Market St
Oct 4, 7 pm
$5

Controlled Dissonance
Pulling out the Light
Cathartech
adc
noisepoetnobody w/ Sisiutl

If you're in the Seattle area, drop in for some screeching and droning. I've performed with most of these acts before, and can vouch that it will be an interesting show.

Air - one of the pillars of our natural world; a complex gaseous phenomenon that reshapes the land and wreaks natural havoc. A powerful force that makes possible all life on this planet.

(Noise Made With) Air pays its respects to the natural world by inviting your submissions of tracks created by use of air, in some manner. Anything from samples of wind to the use of compressed air to create sound: leaf blowers, hurricanes, fans or even the body's unique methods for ridding waste gaseous byproduct.

For more information, use the Contact page.

I realized this morning that my Calendar page had become rather neglected, so I went in to update it with the last show I performed. That's when I got the idea to add audio to the page, in addition to whatever other stuff was already there. I'm uploading some old live recordings now, but finding that I had fewer than I thought.

What I do have, though, will be up by the end of the day. Including my performance at the Get Bent Circuit Bending Music show and my final performance in Virginia, with the short-lived Peninsula Experimental Arts Society*.

Until then, etc. etc.

* Wayne, if you're out there, you should bring this back. It was a fantastic idea.

Have an idea for the next compilation project, but don't have the cover art, title or blurb yet. So, as a quick preview for those who may be interested in getting a head start on creating a submission, the following:

This one will be about air. Noise made with air. Your noise must be somehow air-powered, and I don't mean in the traditional sense that all sound is air-powered (I see you out there, science nerd). You can use samples of wind, or actually make noise with air itself (performance with vacuum cleaners, or leaf blowers, for example); so long as the submitted track is comprised of some manner of air abused for the sake of noise.

No deadline, yet. Might leave this one open-ended for the time being.

Good luck. Motherfuckers.

Evidence.

(That the Destroy movement persists.)