I Am Listening

I am listening

“Where there is ecstasy there is creation.

 Where there is no ecstasy, there is no creation”

-Chandogya Upanishad

I am listening

Low hums from electrical equipment in my home

The sound of machines that keep me warm, cool, bathed in light.

Helpful machines that sing and I don’t really hear them.

That make me live a king’s kind of lush life and I tune out their workman’s song..

Their amplitude is such that, a new base is set. And a new bass is set.

Low hums are processed and reduced as treble to my ear’s eye.

Tuning into to these huhhhhhs these hhmmmms has transformed their relative pitch. To me.

They have been changed by my attention. Or I have been changed by their awareness of my attention.

Symbiotic speed of awareness, we are together changed, and sound shifts to a primarily directional experience

I am processing pitches differently. As I listen, these electrical huhhhhmmms tell me how and where they would like to be assigned. They do not identify as bass. They do not identify as pitch.

They identify as wall of sound, as rainbow, as wash, as a gradient of pressure variations. Invisible sculpture coming to life. Like my ears squint and the weight, the depth, the heaviness of the air molecules is defined.

Hffushhhuuhhh is woven of floor to ceiling gradients.

no directional melodies just temperamental ozone layers of swelling (heat).

The sound….swells the air.

Maybe that’s it.

Engorging the arid planes, disturbing the peace of a desert.

No architecture is still architecture when the disturbance swells, the air molecules and bursts and sound is (engorged).

Sonorous is resonant body. Resonant body is architecture of floor, walls, windows. Of flesh, depth, precise points.

I can perceive directional hissing. Not like sprinklers on summer lawns but vents whose hot breath disseminates quickly after their forceful burst. These are animals of speed and amplitude. These are not pitches. These are so much more than pitches. This is reductionist musicality.

Mid-range stripe of dark blue like a “…” painting across my ears’ eye like a sonic blindfold. Sounds don’t just resound in the architecture, they map to my body in space, like clothing, draped just for my fit.

The resonance of the floor appears after some time as listening becomes defined mostly by directional patterns. Now.

  by Hope Littwin