1. altitude as memory
2. vibration as audiovisual spectacular
3. vibration as portal
4. speed and the void, pt. I
5. vibration as attraction
6. take me for a sleepwalk
7. nervous levitation
8. speed and the void, pt. II

 

1. altitude as memory

I think I had a close encounter with lightning

I think I had three, three close encounters

I have the memory of telling people the stories of the encounters

I have the memory of telling people that I lost my short-term memory, as a result of the encounters

 

and,

 

I know that I have a memory of altitude, of that I am certain

I know the feeling of altitude;

a subtle familiarity

and now, thirteen years on, my sense of altitude-as-a-resting-place, altitude-as-home seems the strongest evidence of any of this strangeness happening at all

 

2. vibration as audiovisual spectacular

 three strikes –

1. car windscreen
2. car bonnet, a few seconds later
3. my house, six months later

 

lightning is

 

a stream of electrons

 

a stream of electrons flowing between or within clouds,

 

or between a cloud and the ground

 

the air surrounding the electron stream heats up,

a thermal expansion

of the plasma

in the lightning channel

 

as the superheated air cools,

it produces

a resonating tube

of partial vacuum

surrounding the lightning’s path

 

a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning’s path

 

a resonating tube

of partial vacuum

surrounding

the lightning’s path

 

the nearby air

expands, contracts

causing the column to vibrate,

a tubular drum head

producing

a sonic shock wave

a tremendous crack

 

as the vibrations gradually die out

the sound echoes and reverberates,

generating the rumbling we call

thunder

 

the audiovisual spectacular

of thunder and lightning

is

a combination of

 

the dynamics      of the vibration      of air molecules

and

their disturbance      by electrical forces

 

disturbance

by electrical forces

 

think about the sound of light

think about the sound of the entire electromagnetic spectrum

think about the sound of a figure dissolving into light

 

3. vibration as portal

 

a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning’s path

 

I am driving through a wild spring storm when the first strike hits my car

 

the sound is dread

 

I don’t see a flash of light

 

rather, a black             opening           smashes into the windscreen

 

it is dark,

and invisible

it is wide, it is thick,

it has form,

it has depth

 

I have a memory of a memory of it

a wide          conduit          plugging in from above

 

2021 – as I read more about lightning –

 

a resonating tube of partial vacuum surrounding the lightning’s path

 

I wonder

did I see the sound of the lightning?

 

There was no brilliant glow, no illumination

rather, a dark portal

I saw and heard the partial vacuum surrounding the lightning’s path?

 

At the time it made sense

now

I don’t quite understand –

what is this phenomena?

 

The second strike, moments later:

 

this time,

 

incandescence

 

sublime, violet tendrils wrap the bonnet of the car, track the wet freeway

 

I know both strikes electrify the car, electrify me

both times my hands, gripping the steering wheel

electricity surging through me

the internal sound of the shock

the radio shouting static

I begin to buzz

I am HIGH, so high

 

I keep driving

the sun is setting,

the wind fierce

the countryside pulsing

my mind is pinging, inside and out

I have shifted up a space, up a plane

 

Outside, in colour. Some kind of disorder. Outside, before I arrive, in colour.

 

My thinking is fast, and decisive

I begin to understand what is going on,

to slow down,

to feel some clarity

 

This storm I am driving through… is actually…my heart. I am driving through MY HEART. The landscape is within me.

 

The storm is expanding, glowing

the sky radiating vivid pink, fire red

I am driving into the sun

the tall, tall trees silhouette black beyond the road,

pulling and twisting the wind

a flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos trace past

slow motion,

threading a line through the chaos

heading west

It is… breathtaking

 

I know what’s going on.

This scene – this beauty… It’s trying to tell me something.

The world is speaking to me.

The world is conjuring up the most beautiful image possible.

It is firing up, it is rousing all of its elements as a gift, just for me, a final show, because I am about to die.

It all makes sense now…

 

The third strike:

 

six months later

my house, window

horizontal

two architectures fold into one

I leave the ground

 

three times I have felt this sound

 

now I am fried

I am terrified

 

the void has opened

 

4. speed and the void, pt. I

 

How quick can a liminal moment be?

 

A millisecond?

 

the speed of the strikes

the speed of light

there is no defence

you cannot shield your face

 

it is deeply unnerving

no matter how fast you move,

the lightning will always be quicker

it can get you

 

my molecules surrender to this constant lack of safety

 

I am tremble stumble shakey high,

all stutter and quick glances

and then as the rush drains

a low level disturbia sets in

 

it is sickening

 

dregs of adrenaline,

a foreign energy pitched low in my solar plexus

grinding a new gear

and it won’t let up

 

I have changed pace

 

I am adrenaline, a resonating tube

 

and,

 

I am a sleepwalker

 

5. vibration as attraction

 

A clap of lightning,

that ultimate rush of vibration

 

energy pushing at you, such speed, such precision

more energy is conjured than should be physically possible

it arrives in an instant, and then – gone, a ghost

 

It is violent

something cracks open

the force is so great and focussed

the pace of it so decisive

it is difficult to resist overlaying an intention on it –

 

nature has chosen me

 

nature has chosen me, held out its hand,

wrenched me away from the human world

I have crossed over, to the atmosphere

there is nothing separating me from the elements

 

an enigmatic force is

building a rapport

I am in rapport

I draw it in,

I am drawn

an electrical field of influence

is drawn to me

a hypnotism

by the elements

 

6. take me for a sleepwalk

 

a nervous, active atmosphere, of the magnetizer

a nervous, passive atmosphere of the one to be magnetized

a strange, recurring dance

a saturation of the nervous system.

 

The 19^th century French neuroscientist

Jean-Martin Charcot

would treat his Salpêtrière patients

with an intense, sudden and unexpected noise

or other vibratory force

like a gong,

tuning fork,

or a brilliant electric carbon-arc light

to disrupt nervous transmission

and so move a patient

between the hypnotic conditions…

catalepsy, lethargy

and

somnambulism.

 

I enter an expanded nervous sleep,

crossing day and night

 

perhaps six months in a deep sleepwalk

 

perhaps a few years in a lighter state of not-quite-here

 

asleep, adrift,

I am fog and cloud

I am no memory

there is no edge between me and not-me

I dissolve into the atmosphere

 

“a cloud drifts into a mountain cave with no plan”

 

well that’s me

 

I am hypnotised by the strange force that visited

 

At the Salpêtrière,

Charcot’s assistant, anatomist and sculptor Paul Richer,

observed that

waves of light or sounds

could be communicated throughout the body

by the vibrations propagated by…

a resonating box

or other suitable amplifying device,

turning the patient into

a vibratory neuroelectric “automate” –

a programmable,

machine – like state

of heightened reflexive response.

 

I cannot make decisions, retain information or navigate space

I have left my body, discovered my twin in the ether

 

am I asleep on the terrestrial

so to wake somewhere else?

 

Lyrics from the songs I was writing at the time –

 

altitude, altitude,

altitude is good,

memory counts for less up here, it takes too much time

What does this even mean? Do I think I live up there now?

 

memory counts for less up here, it takes too much time

 

Am I in the present only if I am up there?

And down here is…the past?

A dream?

A mesmerism?

 

I have a memory of altitude

 

am I now situated up there

with my memories located down on the terrestrial?

 

 

memories at play and rest,

pitching in our psychic landscapes,

our psychic atmospheres

 

meet me at the top of the falls, meet me at the Sound

 

my lyrics from back then long for romance at a great height

 

the mysteries taking place at altitude

feel like a mesmerising, dangerous suitor,

one who has lured me away from the telluric

 

the rain is calling the rivers back,

and the rain will sing

I seem to cover most points of the water cycle…

 

great waters hiding here,

grand rapids hiding here,

those grand, grand rapids reappear

so we can get there faster

 

one year before the lightning strikes, I visit San Francisco for the first time

 

the rolling fog really gets to me

it haunts me,

it makes sense to me

It is trying to tell me something

 

on the beach

the fog is warm

the sand is cold

 

I am curious,

it feels inviting

 

a cloud of mercy hits the sun

you want to laugh like everyone

you want to laugh like everyone

don’t start without me

 

my lyrics from the time are all yearning, levitation, time stretched and folded, clouds, fog, lakes, atmospheric rivers, waiting, circling

 

the rocks are moving, the water’s standing still

 

7. nervous levitation

 

I am a cellist

I sit to play, the soles of my feet resting on the ground

gravity pulls the weight of my arms down into the strings,

muscles drawing out sound through connection, friction

 

If I am nervous I sometimes sit with tense legs, and my legs fall asleep

If I am nervous I hover just above the string, my shoulders drawn up by the tension

If I am nervous I do not make good contact with the string

I am not ‘in’ the string

as I play, I consciously release tension in each part of my body

so that gravity can do its work,

so I can sink into the strings

 

finger tips on metal, on wood, on horse hair, on the strings

vibration of strings to bridge, bridge to belly to sound post to back,

resonating chamber to air, to body

vibration to electrical signals,

to thoughts and feelings

 

what is it to hover on a note?

 

It can imply a hesitancy, a lack of confidence, lack of preparation

and also,

to hover over a note, to hover in a note –

 

a moment to slow, to stretch time

an intentional pause,

the emotion and meaning of the note revealed

through how to place it,

when and how the note lands,

when the note can fade away

 

tension in the hovering,

release in the landing

 

to be suspended

suspension     substance consisting of particles suspended in a medium

to be suspended in time                     suspense

 

the sound of suspension…

 

After the three strikes I couldn’t sing in tune, and I was not pitching under the note

I sat above it, singing everything sharp

I couldn’t land on the pitch, I couldn’t sing within the note

 

What was I hearing back then?

What was I hearing up there?

Did it change my hearing?

 

Where was I?

 

8. speed and the void, pt. II

 

lightning grounds itself via the quickest, shortest means possible

 

I got us a lightning calculator

So we can wait faster

 

How quick can a liminal moment be?

A split second?

 

In my memory I move the sounds of the three strikes away from the moment of impact

 

I separate the sound from the lightning

 

I move them forward and back in time to take a closer look and listen

 

that split second crash of light and sound – I seek to expand it

I take the ferocity, the energy of that transient sound, and I stretch it

I expand the vibration horizontally

I start to play slower

 

I start to write long, unrushed, repetitive music

always moving between notes, above and below them,

never quite landing

 

I write for my string quartet – hazy, dissonant, shimmery clusters of notes

I write clouds, I write fog

I write the audible parts of thunder

I write low level disturbia,

invisible particles

 

I take comfort in this sound, to me it is the sound of the ether

 

over years I keep expanding the sound of the lightning

to hover in the liminal

to take refuge within it

to know it

 

I get to create the void now

 

If I can sit in the sound long enough

then maybe I can make some sense of it all

 

but I have known this new sound for a long time

I heard the sound as a child

it is the first sound I remember

in my cot, or bed – I’m not sure quite how young I was –

a hot summer evening

the sound of a low, textured drone

and a sense of infinity

 

it is peaceful

the moment just before sleep – or was it in a dream?

 

the expanded sound of lightning reactivates that sense of infinity in me

the void as a place of familiarity

time stretched, or shaken, or paused

dreaming and awake,

two spaces folding into one

 

I have been searching for how to make that sound for most of my life

 

Outside in colour. Some kind of dis-order. Some time before I arrive, in colour.

 

In a rain shower the elasticity between sky and ground

leaves the air heavy and emotional

sky and land as one stretched conversation

 

I have slowly found the slowness

extreme slowness

the notes between the notes

the magnetism between the notes

 

the clap of lightning, infinitely stretched

that ultimate rush of vibration

 

If I can sit in the sound, I am the sound

 

the drone

 

the dissolving edges

 

my figure, dissolving into light

 

9. vibration as altitude as vibration

 

2019, 11 years since the lightning encounters

 

I travel to Northern California, a residency

I am making a work about my lightning experiences

I am staying atop a ridge, looking across to a vision of a mountain

gentle clouds crest towards me every morning, every evening

they keep appearing

they do not run out

I don’t know how they conjure the energy to keep rolling towards me

It feels so generous, so kind

 

I feel very at ease

I am living at the height of the clouds and fog

I am in the quiet liminal space

time is waiting for me

 

the quality of vibration up here – these clouds of mercy

 

I work it out

 

I know why I know altitude, why I know clouds

 

that is where the great vibration of the lightning began

this is where the experience began, moments before it reckoned with me –

the source of the electromagnetic radiation

this is where my psychic dream-space-millisecond-sound-of-infinity-the-void-the -ether-fear-hypnotic-state originated

 

then my body talks to me

my molecules tell me to walk down the mountain, and back up again

so I walk down the mountain,

down to the bay,

stand in the water

and then head back up the hill

every day I do this

recalibrating my body weather

allowing the clouds and the bay to have a conversation,

invisible forces acting on each other,

the animal magnetism across the mountain space

I do this for ten days

I change space

 

I am rearranged

 

the rolling fog in San Francisco

why did it speak to me so clearly, back before the lightning?

the sense of mysterious generosity,

the softness and abundance of a phenomena with no edges

just a kind, gentle dissolve

the quality of the clouds

the texture of that vibration…

time travelling clouds, time travelling fog,

preparing me for all of this?

A memory of a memory of a memory

helping me listen

preparing me to hear the void,

to play the nervous atmosphere

 

10. Transient Luminous Events

 

2017, high desert, New Mexico

After a break of over 50 years, scientists are attaching microphones to balloons again!

A new study shows microphones suspended from helium balloons in the stratosphere can detect low – frequency sounds from ocean waves.

These sensors can detect infrasound frequencies, below 20 Hz, more carefully than microphones on the ground.

With a sensor on the ground, the wind is blowing past and creating turbulence and causing distortion, but when you’re being pushed by the wind, that doesn’t create any noise at all since you’re traveling at the same speed as the air around you.

 

Low-frequency sea sounds ring clear at high altitude.

 

Low- frequency

sea sounds

ring clear

at

high altitude

 

Altitude, altitude, altitude,

altitude is good

 

Bibliography

Richard Brill. “What Causes thunder?” Scientific America, December 30, 2002.

Benjamin Franklin, describing lightning.

Carlos S. Alvarado. “Modern Animal Magnestism: The Work Of Alexandre Baréty, Émile Boirac, And Julian Ochorowicz.” Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, vol. 37, no. 2. 2009.

Jonathan W. Marshall. “The Archaeology of the Abstract Body: Parascientific Discourse and the Legacy of Dr J.-M. Charcot, 1876-1969.” French History and Civilization, vol. 3, News and Papers from The George Rudé Seminar. 2019.

A beautiful scholar rock at Chee Lin Nunnery, Hong Kong.

The Archaeology of the Abstract Body: Parascientific Discourse and the Legacy of Dr J.-M. Charcot, 1876-1969’, Jonathan W. Marshall, French History and Civilization. Vol. 3, News and Papers from The George Rudé Seminar

Madeleine Jepsen. “Low Frequency Sea Sounds Ring Clear At High Altitudes.” American Geophysical Union. 2017.