(From 21 July 2023)
Hitched to the rattling bumper of McDonald & Giles’s “Suite in C” at Equipment Room, I felt that thin band of warm silence hugging the music for the first time in ages. Deep listening is sacred to ears numbed by urban dissonance, and it re-tuned my antenna for the rest of my nomadic month. To tweaking SEPTA-sapiens recognizing one of their own aloud, to the STM assistant coating my bus in just enough French to catch it, to my name blooming from a 2:00am tongue—such frequencies are vital. But on more than one couch surfed, I was warned of those ducking them. An old friend on a new acquaintance: “He didn’t seem to register any of my answers.” This sounded like a mirror to our modern deficit (or how being heard=being seen), and later made a sponge propped on palms between long glasses of wine feel like love. It probably was.