now you are out in it
among squacking birds, traffic, overflying aircraft
a very feint train hoot
clattering branches
parakeets
the wind comes and goes in the leaves
the leaves are falling in autumn – lime yellow, brown bracts, while some are still green (apple, elder, ash)
you hear a clank of galvanised metal and you ask yourself if the chickens have found the new place you put the feeder
you don't understand them
you think you understand them, then you realise you don't
they can't fly down easily from the top of the rabbit hutch
so you moved their feeder
now they have trouble finding it
if you put it too low the rabbits eat the chicken food
you were told this is bad for them
if you put it up higher the chickens lose track of it again
you are down among animals and machines
this is extended writing
this is where you work
your study room, Sukanta was saying
this is your study

your study is not alone
it feels alone
at times
at times it has felt alone and it will feel alone
you were told it was alone
you were to be alone
you were prepared to be alone
resilience, determination, work etc
you became tired
tired was a legitimate word to describe the way a person felt
lonely
was not a term
that could be used
sad
hopeless
were terms reserved for the destitute
deprived people
some people had something to complain about
etc

the plane planes over
you can almost sense the way molecules of air are pressed and sort of smeared into a sheet that holds it
the way you puddle clay
the way to press out dough
time aslo [sic]
in this way
forms a sustaining layer
a supporting fabric
at times
at times in time a kind of invisible effect occurs of being borne floated
as if on fluid
this can happen in writing or it can happen in speaking with an interlocutor or in a musical performance
or it could happen perhaps while travelling by boat
you would like to travel by boat
with a listening pavilion
down the canal du midi
stopping from time to time to get out onto the bank
you would greet and be greeted
later you would pack up your pavilion – ropes, bands, livestock, dough
and you would set sail again
ah new sounds: sparrows and others; curtailed trills and ticks, pips, staccato
very compressed
curt
whether they contain melodic material when slowed down for human listening isn't clear
for now

little is known
it seems
you looked up the migration routes of black winged stilts
(those fabulously long legged pied birds)
(those birds that fly over the water at the aiguamolls de l'empordá and they have aerial displays and interference – with their beaks and their long legs and wings and their long necks )
you couldn't work out if the stilts P reported seeing yesterday outside Nairobi were palearctic [palaearctic] migrants, that perhaps has recently arrived from Catalunya – or if they were more likely residents or birds that moved smaller distances in the region
is it known?

. . .

The Palaearctic region has been recognised as a natural zoogeographic region since Sclater proposed it in 1858. The oceans to the north and west, and the Sahara to the south are obvious natural boundaries with other ecozones, but the eastern boundary is more arbitrary, since it merges into another part of the same ecozone, and the mountain ranges used as markers are less effective biogeographic separators. The climate differences across the Western Palearctic region can cause behavioral differences within the same species across geographical distance, such as in the sociality of behavior for bees of the species Lasioglossum malachurum.[1]

. . .

from time to time you want to organize your stuff
put your house in order, as the say[ing] goes

in this way, you would want to give an account of 'extended writing'
as you do it
to remember what 'extended writing' is, or could be (however), your only way is to open up a microphone
then you are out in it
you are not able to take an overview
much or at all
this lack of overview is a feature, perhaps, of this extended writing or this extended activity
maybe this extended practice could be contrasted with an *in*tended practice – a practice tending inwards
as if that would involve a collected and organised subject of some kind
whereas the extended subject (if any) is disperse and distributed
for you that has been your experience
to be dispersed
to be increasingly dispersed, you could say
among the regions
among things
you have grown so disparate and your practice (if any) is confused
it's messy
a crow calls – it's a bold interjection – broadband – upward inflection – then doubled – left to right – in flight
then a plane over
then a parakeet – with 5 seconds delay
this region or realm (to use the term from Palaeartic) – this realm is [a] hybrid region – neither digital nor analogue, you think, neither real nor unreal
why do you say that – because its presence, its being comes and goes like the rustling of the autumn leaves just then
a line of flight with time as its planar layer
a train hoot!
that hoot, you think, is what you can hold to – like a pin
a pin is dropped into the soundworld and it holds
then a quieter doubled version
then another crow
you enter a period of duplication and echos
sun on the brickwork
sun on the dishes and the aerial leaning almost off – glinting on aluminium perforated sheets, shining on white render, shaping a soil stack with a wire cap, strapped to the party wall words
words
languages < > sounds < > faces
translation as the work of the commons
the play of the commons, maybe Fred Moten might say – preferring a toy box to a tool box

the yellow lime leaves shimmer
they turn in the wind on very thin petioles and their heart shaped profile creates a distinctive shimmering sound
not as high as poplar
not as thin as birch
lime
a bright yellow tree in autumn
thickly grown with bushing ivy – the stems
making a home for bats

that s a thing:
how many bats are there?
roosting in those limes
J says 30!
but you only saw 1
that's a difference of 29
but it stopped the developer in their tracks
they were on the backfoot
once J told them about the 30 bats roosting
roosting and flying in the evening around her back yard
J's back yard is close to yours: animals pass via the air, over the roofs, through the canopy – their calls and cries cross the boundaries
those will all go
you hear them gone
you hear the open
open as animals – the otolith

you imagined being on a panel with Kodwo Eshun
you hesitated to say hello to him as you were both leafing absently through the books and cd s at sonic acts
on that small table
run by the bird like person
who s always there
that person is like a fixture
you went to buy some books – it turned out they were all sonic acts books – not the bookshop's books at all – you were disappointed – they were at a discount – at sonic acts you study
go to sonic acts
study

after a while
at this level of gain
with these headphones
you forget you are listening through headphones
extended writing goes on [in] these ambiguous places – half imagined, half real half present – half gone
you re a goner, the saying has it
they re a goner

like a-c is gone
and not gone

you need to finish that piece for c its terrible you haven t done it
you need help

a very high contact call –
almost inaudible
for you

the inaudible begins to preoccupy you
you think
the way Ludovica was saying she was obsessed with Meredith Monk
Ludovica's obsession with Meredith Monk also led
to an obsession with recording her commute in time based media and with notes
her study
Ludovica's study
it s a secret (partly) – fellow travellers do not know they are part of the study

are those chickens eating food from their platform
or is a squirrel getting all their food
S said there were 3 mice in the feeder
S shook it and they jumped out
shake your feeder before you bring it in
the house is full of mice already
running in the walls
big cat sleeps all day
then he sleeps all night
the mice play

you don't drink wine
and the mice don't run around in your frazzled cortex, scratching

you [don t] go out
work
then go out
sounds good
like a train passing the junction
the sound and the idea of a train
a boxcar
passing the junction
through the loughborough junction
at night
how evocative is that!
of riding
hopping freight
you want to put streamboxes on those boxcars and let them ride
let's do it
let's find a way to do it
the way those kids were tagging subway cars
they weren't tagging them they were painting them up as mobile works
they painted them up at night
they'd finish and they'd make a call to that photographer
that photographer would come out and get them – with 4 or 5 quick shots one after the other as the car passed on the opposite side
that s all that's left now, for the most part
those kids were blown away
they said
by the idea of their work circulating in the world
all over the NY transit system
before the internet – was the thing
they'd paint them up and go to school
then their works would start to circulate
the NY Transit Authority would buff those cars
they'd remove the work
those photographs in the Museum Of The Bronx – those are the only documentation left, together with some sketch books – of that work
those mobile art works
that circulation and those exchanges

raucous voices
guttural calls

we're under the planes
in that sense, the planes serve to establish a flatness
ontological flatness of remote soundworld
the possibility of flatness
the indefine of sound (s) – opening on flatness
the possibility of a bush of rosemary listening – what a bush of rosemary sounds like – to itself – in the virtual space between one side of the rosemary bush and the other – one and the other – leaves and stems – infra – thin
that student told you all about the infra thin
who were they?
they even gave you a nut bar!
you never forget a gift given spontaneously
like that
that is some snack
it becomes a snack that becomes actually inexhaustible
like a magic pot
you can eat it and you can (still) have it

the text waits in its wrapper
the wrapper is on the page
the leaves are rustling
you see them twist and turn: scintillating
then you hear them:
shimmering

that gap, which verges on the imperceptible
some times
is
the infra thin
that student advised you to check it out
check that out
they said
the two of you were recording a rosemary bush with a modified tablet
the tablet produced a much more vivid recording than the portable recorder
you were talking about using a tree as a separator, when making a recording
that student – you're sorry you don't know their name –
was pointing to how that space was critical
you tried it together with a rosemary bush – clipping a microphone on each side
the implication, it seems, could be that the: you are not recording the rosemary bush but the rosemary bush is recording
the 'rosemary bush recording' is disturbing the subject–object relations, assumed to hold
they are not holding
in that jardin botanico in manizales, those relations were becoming mobile
once you got out of that stuffy room!
go out

you are partly out
partly in
semi dispersed, you spend your time in various ways:

making bread
cleaning a bit
taking out the compost
filling the bird feeders
building a small platform
going to san mei gallery to see those 'drawings of time'
those remarkable large drawings on 3 or 4 sheets of paper
and so heavy, Ludovica was saying, when they were being hung on the walls
to lift those heavy sheets of paper onto the walls at san mei gallery was a feat of strength,
Ludovica was saying
standing in those brown suede shoes
near those big drawings – covering the walls of the gallery – which had been made there on site and or at Dumfries – as part of [a] residency exchange
they were a bit like maps and they were a bit like very fluid documents of time gathering, dispersing and forming regions – indeterminate regions which were in defined
the definition and the vantage point of those regions – those areas something like cells, was not clear
flows and lines also disturbed the arrangement of cells, creating a more elevation view, rather than a plan view – the sheets tipped up and down
those heavy paper sheets
the boundaries themselves – stippled, dotted, hatched – recalling the ecological thickness of boundaries
enacting a thickening of borders over time
and a permeability of divisions over time
borders layed out provisionally – in landscape – seem to become more porous and more elevated over time – as they are worked and reworked – drawn, re drawn – with drawn – drawn over – this drawing *out* was compellingly encacted by those drawings – as if – and as – they were drawing themselves as we were there – as the drawing – far from completed was ongoing – before our very eyes – among those little stauettes with their insides showing through – perched on the piano or the mantle or a shelf – those great drawings – in which time was reflected and held like an impossible vessel – a curious seive, brimming with liquids – well but quietly, opening their faces to the viewers, to the room – candid – flat
tilted
tipped

1 trypich was divided horizontally – it ran ceiling to floor
1 trypich was divided vertically – it spanned from one wall to another
the lines in the tryptich are bound to be exhaustively covered elsewhere
so key are they to the tradition
let's just say: they are everything and nothing
crossed and, in crossing, left
the constant crossing and recrossing of lines between / over zones, as set up at the level of the substrate, is also [a] way to visually contest the way divisions are presented as natural breaks
of course there is nothing natural about them
species as event
drawing / (un)drawing as commoning
in < > out
<) the way Kodwo Eshun uses pairs of fleches in Brighter Than The Sun..
really a book committed to the posibilities of un-learning by plunging in to the work of beats
from inside, you can say, the times of beats, possibilities emerge to experience kinds of spaces, sociabilities, exchanges as already present in and around – as already inhabiting the space[s] – as connections along flat planes: forest floor sheet etc
that experience of de stabilisation and dispersal is also suggested, almost imperceptiby, in the flight of the monarch in brooklyn, say, by the term:
tilt –
turning up and to
these very small events can be taken as apertures for the work of everyday de-construction
the regime Kodwo Eshun perhaps refers to
when he talks about how to de-colonize the imagination
when he was speaking about that at Sonic Acts
when he and Angela were saying how the colonial projects impact us all
they diminish us all
differently
some are affected more intensively and some with lethal violence
to acknowledge those differences
also to recognize the common losses
and you can evev say advisedly:
common chances
arising at different levels of the everyday
in different folds and you can even add clumsily: different pockets partially concealed in the supposedly self evident outfits you put on every day
worn day in day out
by you

[note: as is known from / for Michel Serres, time can usefully be considered by imagining a line drawn on a piece of fabric, which is then hastily wadded and stuffed into a pocket – that can be one way to think it] [2]


make bird boxes
study electricity

Credits / References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Palaearctic. Accessed 24/10/23.
[2] Serres, Michel (1995) Conversations on science, culture, and time. Michel Serres with Bruno Latour. Translated from French by Roxanne Lapidus. University of Michigan Press p60–61.