The Lost Pedestrian

i’ve been thinking a lot about glaciers since your trip to Alaska. And what they might sound like. i reconnected with this almost friend from my art school days, Pierre. And I did not realize that he was one my students when I taught a class in digital sampling. I could not remember that at all. I remember teaching the class. And I remember taking my students on a field trip to the Lyon & Healy harp factory. And I remember bringing “guest artists” into the class each week for the students to record (a singing dog and people with very unusual voices). And I remember that each week when the students played recordings of their work, we would turn the lights off, except for one very dim red light bulb. And I remember the head of the sound department occasionally peaking his head in. And I remember he told he could not tell if I was teaching a class or leading a seance. And I remember not saying, what’s the difference? And then I remember not being re-hired.

So… Pierre takes trips to the Arctic to record the sound of glaciers. And sometime over the winter, when Walden Pond was frozen, Pierre dug a little hole and stuck a microphone through the iceghost into the water.He said the recording sounded like the ghosts of 1000 crickets. I think he said that glaciers might sound the same, very ghost-like but less chirpy.

And I wondered if I he would let me hear his recording of the glaciers and if they would become like a song he can’t get out of your head.

Pierre also recalled how we collaborated on something for WhiteWalls magazine, and how I did the graphics and the layout. And I said how could that be? I had very little if any talent for graphics. He said it was just something I did in those days. Helping people with whatever they needed help with even if I was of no help whatsoever.

And I thought about memory. And the life that other people remember me living which I somehow was not around to experience. maybe memory is just chatter. maybe memory sounds like a thousand glaciers.

maybe i”ve already written to you about this before. maybe I already told you that when I was in the hospital post-bike accident 8 years ago, going in and out of consciousness, heavily sedated by morphine…. my sister tells me she remembers a time when i awakened and I started to give a little talk about string theory, and that it even was informative and made sense. and of course i did not know and I still do not know anything about string theory. i believe there are things that are called strings, but it does not matter whether i believe they exist or not. if people are seeing strings, i have no reason to doubt them.