Here we are in the midst of an aural procession of recorded sounds, snippets of conversations in French and English and other languages, sounds that open up spaces into which we fit ourselves sometimes happily, sometimes with some trepidation. Vast stretches of precise, mechanical clatter in which a chime intrudes and melts away like a snow-flake on a windshield. CD 6–of course, the first I would listen to, since my poem is found there, ends with a solid drone, which comes as a bit of a shock, given the lightness of the sounds that come in the first track. If this drone is the “beach” that the keel of the ship comes to rest on, then it must be a beach of volcanic ash, with obsidian stratifications.

To know the end of the voyage might give me a compass when I return to CD 1 to begin a sequential listening. More messages soon.