I woke up to the sound of crows, cawing madly, negotiating distribution of the daily scavenge. Some days I’m lucky and they have chosen another neighbourhood, and I get a more dulcet breed of bird that lifts the spirit and makes you feel, just for a while, that the world is a paradise. But the crows eventually return, although what they lack in voice they make up for with an odd combination of comical walk, intelligence, and the deep shimmering blackness of their wings. You can watch a crow and think on its industriousness, its bulk, and its sharpness; you just don’t want to hear it caw all morning.
My waking progresses to the point where I can open my eyes. There’s a hazy light filtering through the blinds and curtains. I only arouse my lethargic hulk because I crave caffeine in the mornings, and I want to get to my reading. I want to read what happened a million years ago, when we crawled out of the swamp, a desperate fearful creature that, however strangely, was destined to develop a superstructure atop the animal amygdala, a cerebral cortex that would have us flying through the universe and reflecting simultaneously on the unified and multiform moment, on the past, the present and the future, from the control panel of a fantastic fuselage.
I want what I want and I want freedom, and already this reading is taking me everywhere.
I decide to cook eggs and eat them on toast.
The pursuit of bliss knows no bounds; it is my joy and my downfall, but there’s nothing better than eggs. Presently I look up from my gluttony and fix my sated, avaricious eyes on the world. If you can eat eggs you are a snake, and a fox, and an eagle; stealing eggs and gorging on them is something we creatures all understand.
Julia Gillard is on the TV talking about a price on carbon. This in the face of extraordinary opposition, even to the very idea of global warming. Now this is an interesting point to come to, when we disturb the one solid, immutable thing we know, this surreal globe that spins and travels in the magnetic control of a hot star. Even when the earth spew's molten rock, or cannons us with hard water, it’s what we expect. We even know, because we’re so god damned smart, that it heats and cools every so geologically often. But we’ve never conjured the storms ourselves, never warmed up our beautiful world, or cooled it down. That’s the radical thing, the thing that fundamentalists can’t and won’t tolerate the possibility of.
But the hurricanes and tsunami's and floods haven't hit me personally, not yet.
It’s time to get out of here, to walk in the park, to look at the river, the multitudinous twinkly river, giver of life and floater of boats.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Jackhammer
A jackhammer has started up just outside my window. Like some kind of urban musac it seeks to provide a backround beat to the morning activities. On reflection, I have long thought that the sound of the jackhammer is much underrated. People are happy to listen to bagpipes and piano organs, and leap about to Chinese cymbals, yet they run scared of the ubiquitous pulsating progenitor of creative destruction, el hammer de jack!
The extraordinary thing about the sound of the hammer is that it contains a complex mix of insistent clinking alto and grumbling rhythmic base, an achievement that demands respect. It resonates profoundly in the centre of your being as it reverberates through the floor, and says HELLO! as it rings in your ears. As a pneumatic apparatus it functions well in the wind section, and as a beat generator it is also happy in percussion, adding mutifunctionality to its list of technical feats.
With the trumpet, the player can moderate the sound by placing a cap over the end of the instrument. The singular thing about the hammer is that it is the audience that adjusts the sound, by placing caps over their ears. This both subdues the higher notes and moderates the base. The hammerer of course wears these at all times, to get a cleaner sound, as well as to prevent industrial deafness.
The jackhammer also has therapeutic potential. As it crumbles the rock that it is played on its powerful sound waves can loosen knotted muscles, defrag and reboot the cerebral cortex, and leave you generally living in the moment. You could think of it as a kinder form of electric shock treatment. For that matter the hammer may be the ideal music therapy for hardened criminals doing time. While it would not exactly provide the solace of the 12 bar blues, it could provide a distraction from troubles, and double nicely as a rock breaker.
As I was getting into the delirious stages of the session, another hammer had joined the party. I noticed that it threw out more grumble and less tin than my erstwhile soloist, but together they achieved the desired wall-of-sound effect, a wall, however, that had the sense that it was closing in. Well the two of them took to jamming and duelling, asking questions and answering them, sounding an industrial age version of a Mongolian throat chant: guttural, glottal, and gravel tone to boot. Enjoying the mesmerizing effect of this never ending rhythm, I found myself throwing some clicks away. And as the crescendo was building I really got into the mood and began slam dancing around the room, throwing myself bodily into a wall or two.
I don´t know, I must have had a good time because when I woke up in the hospital I had a yearning for road works.
The extraordinary thing about the sound of the hammer is that it contains a complex mix of insistent clinking alto and grumbling rhythmic base, an achievement that demands respect. It resonates profoundly in the centre of your being as it reverberates through the floor, and says HELLO! as it rings in your ears. As a pneumatic apparatus it functions well in the wind section, and as a beat generator it is also happy in percussion, adding mutifunctionality to its list of technical feats.
With the trumpet, the player can moderate the sound by placing a cap over the end of the instrument. The singular thing about the hammer is that it is the audience that adjusts the sound, by placing caps over their ears. This both subdues the higher notes and moderates the base. The hammerer of course wears these at all times, to get a cleaner sound, as well as to prevent industrial deafness.
The jackhammer also has therapeutic potential. As it crumbles the rock that it is played on its powerful sound waves can loosen knotted muscles, defrag and reboot the cerebral cortex, and leave you generally living in the moment. You could think of it as a kinder form of electric shock treatment. For that matter the hammer may be the ideal music therapy for hardened criminals doing time. While it would not exactly provide the solace of the 12 bar blues, it could provide a distraction from troubles, and double nicely as a rock breaker.
As I was getting into the delirious stages of the session, another hammer had joined the party. I noticed that it threw out more grumble and less tin than my erstwhile soloist, but together they achieved the desired wall-of-sound effect, a wall, however, that had the sense that it was closing in. Well the two of them took to jamming and duelling, asking questions and answering them, sounding an industrial age version of a Mongolian throat chant: guttural, glottal, and gravel tone to boot. Enjoying the mesmerizing effect of this never ending rhythm, I found myself throwing some clicks away. And as the crescendo was building I really got into the mood and began slam dancing around the room, throwing myself bodily into a wall or two.
I don´t know, I must have had a good time because when I woke up in the hospital I had a yearning for road works.
