Experiment 2

Cruelty Free Dead Cats

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Studio 2: Autobiographicalish

Ranos

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call [_____] . . . when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.” ​(50) ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick ​(ART)

A plane flies overhead. An air conditioning unit stops suddenly as if on queue. Truck brakes squeak in the distance. The computer hums. Perhaps they are train brakes, not truck brakes, because they keep making the sound again and again. Another plane, this one getting louder instead of quieter--now fading into an oceanic groan. ​(SOUNDS 1-5) ​Police sirens.

A red bird ​(LOVE)​ flies by, lands on the table before me and then disappears into the twelve-foot hedge that surrounds the yard. In spite of the city’s noise, fragments of placid peacefulness arise and burst like bubbles hitting the surface of a liquid.

Then the air conditioning unit starts back up, rattling its own cage with its vibrations.

The woman in the house comes outside and blows ​(L/W 1) (DESPISE) ​the leaves off her driveway, keeps blowing ​(L/W 2) ​and will continue to blow ​(L/W 3) ​all the way down to the street where she will then blow ​(L/W 4) ​the gutter clean enough to eat out of--she does this every day that it is not raining​(L/W 5) (FACT)​, sometimes even twice a day when the strands of pollen from our pin oaks travel over onto her immaculately manicured lawn ​(EXAG)​. With a puff of air the scent of uplifted dirt, pollen, animal feces, dead leaves and debris fills the air (SMELL 1-5)​.

I breathe shallowly, pressing the tip of my pen to the blank surface of the page. Henry Miller was an obsessive sweeper--it was his way of making himself demonstrably useful, visibly contributory to the runnings of the households where he couch surfed on the regular. I can see him in his Big Sur home years later--did he use a leaf blower to clear his patio? Was he equally obsessive? ​(SEX) (ADMIRE)

The work that I am doing now should have been done weeks ago, but I have waited and waited--not because I didn’t have time--but because I did not have anything to say. ​(FLAWS) No, that isn’t true. I have felt that way ​(DID 1)​, but this time it is something different. The ink clots and the pen slips and I now have a bright blue line midway down the front of the gauzy white blouse I had managed to keep spotless for more than five years ​(TEXT 1) (HAP 1) (LIE)​.

Not a word, but a mess is almost as good.

I look around our yard, the steeply rising terrain that leads up to the shed rotting on the upper northwest corner. The hedge wraps all around, obscuring the back porch from the view of all three bordering neighbors. In the southwest corner, there is a bradford pear tree that has split in two already and was consequently topped. It was supposed to die years ago, according to an arborist. It lives on, its trunk entwined in ivy, squirrels rustling its upper branches. East of that is the part of the house I use as a studio--it gets the best light for most of the day, except during the summer when it is gloomy and shaded by all the deciduous trees--the dogwood, the cherry....

In the center of the yard, where the dogwood sits in a thicket of azaleas and forsythias, two pine bird houses sit perched on steel pipes about five feet high....they are occasionally inhabited by bluebirds and wrens, usually in the spring ​(PLACE)​. I throw out seed for them in the morning ​(DID 2) ​though I worry they will come to expect it.

During the hurricane last month, I had a family of cardinals land on my doorstep, chirping loudly, desperate for food ​(HAP 2)​. I gave them some grapes and some safflower seed and they’ve been hanging closer ever since ​(DID 3) (HAP 3)​.

I lean back in the chair and feel the cold grate of its back on my arms ​(TEXT 2), ​brush a few stray pollen squiggles ​(TEXT 3)​ off my shirt, noticing the broken and brittle ​(TEXT 4) fingernails that tip the end of each hand....artist hands, stained in places in different colors, not well-maintained ​(HANDS)​, not girlish and lovely, but rough ​(TEXT 5)​ and cracked in places from overwashing.....

What should the project do? ​(QUEST)​ Why are you working with sound anyway? What do you hope to achieve? You’re not a techie like this--you don’t record sound in multiple tracks--it’s all you can do to use the microphone built in to your computer....

But I chose this topic to research and I’d hate to be that absent-minded professor (CLICHE)​ who really was so absent-minded she didn’t finish her own homework when she told her students she would do every single thing she asked of them.

Studio 2 Reflection:

REFLECTION:

Still much work to be done with this one, but at least this is a start....I seem to be fixated on this idea of merging marine life with the terrestrial. As with my other story, I am focused on sound, the primary subject of my inquiry project which I am still finding challenging. This story is nowhere near done yet, though my approach has been to try and focus on knocking out the rules first, seeing what sorts of oddities they progress, and then trying at the last minute to pull it all together into something cohesive and seemingly organic.

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