25 March 2020



10:13:22

you're listening to the stream from london-camberwell - london, loughborough junction - the yard behind your house. the back yard is in early spring, it feels like: bees in the air in front of the hive, shoots opening, the hens laid an egg
you heard a parakeet singing a long involved song, perhaps incorporating elements of starling songs, you thought. you were standing there with a bowl eating rice
BC died yesterday
you built a box
the stream drops out
you think it's the source - the network could be unstable - maybe m's icecast server is causing it - you don't know
restart the streambox a
restart vlc
it's quiet
the traffic on herne hill road is thinner but it's more prominent
you can hear as far as the junction with coldharbour lane in detail
it s completely still
no wind stirs the branches. even thin leaves are not moving
sounds diffuse evenly in the thin air
the particulate load appears to be down
the clarity of the air seems higher, as with the stars in the night sky
small sounds of animals and birds around the streambox appear
the soundscape is simplified
there is no overflight of planes
flights into heathrow international seem to have stopped altogether - the new microphone with bridget bell at london-walworth is empty of aircraft
release of pressure - time, which generally takes the form of a tight bellows, alternating between the compression of the overflights and the dilation of the intervals - enters a flatter phase
now a plane is heard - it's quite distant, you're trying to track it
this streambox isn't fitted with extra ear like flanges
you are trying to hear, if the
a train passes with complex harmonics, if that's what it is - the motor and the tracks
crow crow crow
drop
then a series of drops and a final dropout
run speedtest
then it picks up again

as skip truck passes, maybe, with a heavy low metallic impact
you can't describe anything
you're tired
your mind, as Ella Finer was saying, is all over the place
you can not bring your mind into range or tune to it
thinking reveals its essential dispersion: far from centred, it happens as scattered processes, mainly on the edges, the way mushrooms grow along the edges of car parks, where they hit a barrier - that's were they concentrate - they literally concresce along those interfaces with tarmac and hardcore - in the forest
the forest is full of thick mosses and beds of leaf mould
the mycelia are in there - they surface, however, where the car park or the remains of a car occur
voices in the gardens
humming
now a plane really does cross - in all its modulating detail - through the blue sky, you think: the pale whitish sky - blue fading to whitish sun light on the slates and the concrete roof tiles - it's an ugly city, you think - no body takes the time or trouble to clear it - gradually, each tbridsime something it repaired it's repaired with the cheapest available materials at the cheapest rate. the frustration and lack of care entailed in each of those repair jobs, as the handy person juggles their phone and their other jobs, accrues bit by bit -
into those areas, birds and other organisms bring their cultures
those cultures, by contrast, are full of vitality, broadly speaking - their vocalisations are expectant - they expect communication and reciprocating energies
these communities are the main sources of creativity
quite little is know about them
our surroundings are barely heard
now we are hearing them - in the radio space
dropout
restrictions impact everybody differently
m was talking about his friend H, stuck in Utrecht, unable to return to their chaotic family, i a studio flat in a high building empty of others, no outside space, no outside forays permitted, not common spaces, no cafes open - how they run in the early morning, stop using drugs, make music
all the directives you are subject to are issued by people in ample homes - their homes are full of chances for play and recreation and their yards are full of areas where they can go and have their secluded meet-ups
intense bird sounds around the microphones
over lay of voices
purring type calls of parakeets, crooning of doves
whirring and battering of wings

crow crow

a passage of dense varied textures - mainly startlings with very detailed variations and crossovers, wings up close, this submersion in thick sonic materials up close - low down
contrast the visual landmark with its features of prominence and oversight
you're really in it now - in the thick of something - you can be out there - out and in - your mind is all over the place, the most mundane sounds reach you as unheard experiments in inter-species composition - bold declarations - stringent cries!

the world comes to you as a dream
the subtraction of BC from this world has an incalculable effect, leaving it, in your experiences, a shadow of itself
its a thick shadow, full of shifts and detail
'from the outside' it seems as if you simply inhabit that world
'underneath' you have already gone
little by little your purchase on the world frays and lessens
each loss, whether human or of other animals and organisms - a lost chopstick under the floor, a companion animal, lessens and chips at the provisional model of the worly you work with, leaving it thinner, more holed and ragged
this frayed, ragged and dilapidated state is not easily noticeable to others, who are getting on with their business
but to you, it can only increase
paradoxically, the fuller and thicker the soundscape, the thinner it feels, to you

BC's body is in the shed by the side of the house
BC is wrapped in a cloth
as if in bed
P put him in a box - you haven't seen him
perhaps you won t see him again
you touched his nose
he was barely alive - he was sniffing - you went to see him - he was lying on a pad on the floor - you sent a whatsapp to everybody to say he was in his last moments, this cat of yours, B C, was reaching the very end, spare a thought for BC now, you said in your whatsapp, his movements are reduced to next to nothing, I don't think he is in pain, you wrote in the whatsapp, sitting on the floor beside him, with one hand on his head, with tears running from your eyes and snot hanging from your nose - that's what it's like - p came and sat there too - you sat together, the three of you - M was in the shower, you were in M's room - ou turned BC before, so his open eyes could see the light from the yard, through the glass - the bright light of spring - his eyes were open fixedly and he could not move - he breathes shallowly - you touched his head and his nose the way you always used to - what could you do - what can you do? for a companion animal
BC did everything, you feel
as a work, BC was everything - he entered the role, with LC together and he inhabitated that role with unfailing boldness and determination, right up to the bitter end - right up to when p had to go get him from J's yard, because he couldn't move - any more
he was trying to drink from J's pool - he couldn't do it - he was racked by thirst
thirst racked him
he was internally poisoned by his failing kidneys
he didn't stop approaching
he always approached
ppl pushed him away - he always came back, he pushed his wide head to them and up against them
ppl got annoyed with him
he peed on the floor
you see now how everything BC did had a kind of necessity - it completed a way of being
nothing can fill the gap left by the passing of BC, you understand - each other animal is oblivious of it - they go on with their work
now it's us up to you
it's over to you now - to embody that cat Big Cat, he can't do any more

you have to go out and dig a hole and place him in it
that's now a thing you have to do

go out amidst
'nothing is lower than you ground' you wrote once
in fact, you have to dig below the ground for BC and place hime there
time runs on and tears run down

11:20:52