01-03-2016, 09:52 PM
"Here the phonograph, you see, is a thin disc or diaphragm of iron, beneath which is this fine steel point, which moves up and down by the vibrations of the disc. Beneath this is the revolving cylinder, on which is this spiral groove. On the axis of the cylinder is a screw, the distance between the threads being the same as the distance between the grooves on the cylinder. The cylinder is covered with a sheet of tin foil--you will see it operate by and by--and when the cylinder is revolved the steel point presses the tin-foil into the spiral groove. If now the diaphragm be made to vibrate by the voice the steel point makes a series of indentations in the tin-foil grooves, corresponding to the sounds uttered. On going over again the same groove with the steel point, by setting the cylinder again at the starting point, that is, by going over the same ground, the indentations in the tin-foil cause the membrane again to vibrate precisely as at first, thus reproducing the sound originally made. The same sound wave you first made is returned to you in whatever shape you made it. Your words, for example, are preserved in the tin-foil, and will come back upon the application of the instrument years after you are dead in exactly the same voice you spoke them in."
"How many times?"
"As long as the tin-foil lasts. This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb, voiceless matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words, and centuries after you have crumbled into dust will repeat again and again, to a generation that could never know you, every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you choose to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm."
- from an interview with Thomas Edison, circa 1878.
Dan is reading that to Sera from his phone, the whole thing, the bits about grooves and measurements, needles against tin. Imprints and exprints. He wants her to hear the words, tongueless, toothless instrument and all the rest, and has to explain to her the whole of the context. She doesn't really know who Thomas Edison is: just, see, she likes his bulbs.
Dan rolls his eyes.
Hahahahaha. That was a joke, Dan, mostly.
"Oh." When he explains it, the supple edge of her half-smile, half-smirk rising, breaching, settling back into the gleaming waters from which it rose. She chides him for playing with his phone at a party. He rolls his eyes. Later, he will explain to her about Ice Wine. Has to check his phone to confirm the details: the grapes on the vine to freeze, then picked within the first few hours. The sharp brightness inherent in the stuff: sweet and acid, winter come right round again.
Sera hugs Leah of course when the girl comes tottering down the stairs. Takes in the get-up and has with it this moment of being Fucking Old because: doesn't she remember a different sort of girl. Weren't we all different sorts of girls. That moment lasts as long as it takes Leah to understand that the metal from which Sera's bustier was forged is Really Metal (it is: caging, right, the way these things always have been) and consequently not the Easiest Thing to Hug. Flash of her teeth: laughter bright and sure beneath her skin, liquid. Leah is having some trouble with those heels so Sera murmurs some secrets to her about being upright on them.
Where to put your weight, yeah? Stop tottering forward onto the balls of your feet. Strike first with the heels. Stand solidly, the way you do with everything else. Practice and the world's your goddamned oyster, but that's true of everything, isn't it?
No it isn't. Sera practiced being invisible-to-normal-people for a month and the world wasn't her goddamned oyster. It was something else entirely.
--
Hi Alexander, How are you? How about a hug? This is not when he arrives, but later when Dan has explained icewine to her and she has had a glass or two to supplement the glass or three or seventeen of whatever she had before the icewine. "Haven't seen you in forever." Which is true. She smells like cloves and alcohol and other things that are not illegal here, in this day and age, in this place and time. But still: cop. Doesn't seem to phase her. Tells him she likes the icewine. Mind, Dan has made her a cocktail with it, like a martini. Vodka and icewine in a sugar-rimmed martini glass, but she keeps imagining the shivering, frozen grapes bursting on her tongue.
Kalen: also a hug, warm, and a haven't scene you in forever which is also true and something about something from the first time she ever met him makes her think he would like that stuff Dan was reading-to-her-off-his-phone that Edison said so she gets Dan and drags him over and tells him to: recite. He smirks, laughs. Oh, I have your permission to read from the phone at a party now, do I? But, he loves the whole thing, all of it. The toothless, tongueless instrument that is not voiceless. The precision of the tin grooves: the rhythmic necessity of them. He leans back against the kitchen counter and reads them again.
--
Sera takes a selfie and texts it to someone who does not live here anymore. Sugar-rimmed martini glass in hand. ICEWIND! it says. Ah, well. Later, there will be another one. It will appear like magick in another time zone, another coast, some other world. Later, with LED lights on the leafs of metal covering her boobs.
--
Henry? Does she remember him? Er - kind of? Not enough to hug or anything except after a certain hour she has been imbibing and is inclined to hug everyone and OUCH, the hardware, Sera. But the talking fox, right? Fuck.
She tells Red a story about Jean-Paul Sartre. He had a bad trip once and spent the rest of his life being followed around by a talking lobster. She wants to give him a folded-up note after the story: T ___ F ___, but he's a fox. How would he write back?
Magic, maybe. Later she tells Kiara the story about the story: and also what she thought about the story. The idea about the note-writing and lobsters and the strange and terrible things that get appended to you and follow you around it gets VERY COMPLICATED, this story-within-a-story stuff, so Sera says. And she tries to get back to the beginning several times but everything is curled strangely inside her mind and instead: Hi Kiara. That is a gorgeous dress.
What you can take from this is: she is glowing. There's a light inside of her that leaks out everywhere. A frame, a filament: burning.
Like the inside of an Edison bulb.
--
Hi Grace. You arrive in time for a hug and a scrog, or something. A hair-ruffle at the very least. Those lights are bloody amazing. Sera's boobs are metallic and she loves them, thank you very much. Does she notice Grace-avoiding-Alexander? Mmm. Depends how obvious it is. Whether they are like magnets, all repel-and-attract, or more subtle, shifting, all drifting currents, eddies and backwaters, undertows. Probably she doesn't notice. Which is strange because sometimes she sees so much, almost everything, the world and its bones and its strange sinews and secrets, the language of it wrapped up in her body, sharp and intimate as muscle-and-bone. But you know, not always. Sometimes she lives inside of it, too. Sometimes she keeps the tenderest parts of herself entirely to herself.
--
Richard Oenomaus of House Quaesitor spends his time at a party staring broodily out of the window. Maybe it isn't broodily but for fuck's sake when you spend your time at a party staring out the window it is like going to a bar and drinking only water and hanging out in the creepy little corridor leading to the bathrooms and not talking to anyone. Bad analogy but, still. Creepy.
She feels like needling him, so she asks him to dance.
By then, she may or may not have LED lights all over her boobs. Maintain your stupid fucking broody dignity now, guy-who-isn't-very-nice-to-his-weird-awesome-dad.
"How many times?"
"As long as the tin-foil lasts. This tongueless, toothless instrument, without larynx or pharynx, dumb, voiceless matter, nevertheless mimics your tones, speaks with your voice, utters your words, and centuries after you have crumbled into dust will repeat again and again, to a generation that could never know you, every idle thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you choose to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm."
- from an interview with Thomas Edison, circa 1878.
Dan is reading that to Sera from his phone, the whole thing, the bits about grooves and measurements, needles against tin. Imprints and exprints. He wants her to hear the words, tongueless, toothless instrument and all the rest, and has to explain to her the whole of the context. She doesn't really know who Thomas Edison is: just, see, she likes his bulbs.
Dan rolls his eyes.
Hahahahaha. That was a joke, Dan, mostly.
"Oh." When he explains it, the supple edge of her half-smile, half-smirk rising, breaching, settling back into the gleaming waters from which it rose. She chides him for playing with his phone at a party. He rolls his eyes. Later, he will explain to her about Ice Wine. Has to check his phone to confirm the details: the grapes on the vine to freeze, then picked within the first few hours. The sharp brightness inherent in the stuff: sweet and acid, winter come right round again.
Sera hugs Leah of course when the girl comes tottering down the stairs. Takes in the get-up and has with it this moment of being Fucking Old because: doesn't she remember a different sort of girl. Weren't we all different sorts of girls. That moment lasts as long as it takes Leah to understand that the metal from which Sera's bustier was forged is Really Metal (it is: caging, right, the way these things always have been) and consequently not the Easiest Thing to Hug. Flash of her teeth: laughter bright and sure beneath her skin, liquid. Leah is having some trouble with those heels so Sera murmurs some secrets to her about being upright on them.
Where to put your weight, yeah? Stop tottering forward onto the balls of your feet. Strike first with the heels. Stand solidly, the way you do with everything else. Practice and the world's your goddamned oyster, but that's true of everything, isn't it?
No it isn't. Sera practiced being invisible-to-normal-people for a month and the world wasn't her goddamned oyster. It was something else entirely.
--
Hi Alexander, How are you? How about a hug? This is not when he arrives, but later when Dan has explained icewine to her and she has had a glass or two to supplement the glass or three or seventeen of whatever she had before the icewine. "Haven't seen you in forever." Which is true. She smells like cloves and alcohol and other things that are not illegal here, in this day and age, in this place and time. But still: cop. Doesn't seem to phase her. Tells him she likes the icewine. Mind, Dan has made her a cocktail with it, like a martini. Vodka and icewine in a sugar-rimmed martini glass, but she keeps imagining the shivering, frozen grapes bursting on her tongue.
Kalen: also a hug, warm, and a haven't scene you in forever which is also true and something about something from the first time she ever met him makes her think he would like that stuff Dan was reading-to-her-off-his-phone that Edison said so she gets Dan and drags him over and tells him to: recite. He smirks, laughs. Oh, I have your permission to read from the phone at a party now, do I? But, he loves the whole thing, all of it. The toothless, tongueless instrument that is not voiceless. The precision of the tin grooves: the rhythmic necessity of them. He leans back against the kitchen counter and reads them again.
--
Sera takes a selfie and texts it to someone who does not live here anymore. Sugar-rimmed martini glass in hand. ICEWIND! it says. Ah, well. Later, there will be another one. It will appear like magick in another time zone, another coast, some other world. Later, with LED lights on the leafs of metal covering her boobs.
--
Henry? Does she remember him? Er - kind of? Not enough to hug or anything except after a certain hour she has been imbibing and is inclined to hug everyone and OUCH, the hardware, Sera. But the talking fox, right? Fuck.
She tells Red a story about Jean-Paul Sartre. He had a bad trip once and spent the rest of his life being followed around by a talking lobster. She wants to give him a folded-up note after the story: T ___ F ___, but he's a fox. How would he write back?
Magic, maybe. Later she tells Kiara the story about the story: and also what she thought about the story. The idea about the note-writing and lobsters and the strange and terrible things that get appended to you and follow you around it gets VERY COMPLICATED, this story-within-a-story stuff, so Sera says. And she tries to get back to the beginning several times but everything is curled strangely inside her mind and instead: Hi Kiara. That is a gorgeous dress.
What you can take from this is: she is glowing. There's a light inside of her that leaks out everywhere. A frame, a filament: burning.
Like the inside of an Edison bulb.
--
Hi Grace. You arrive in time for a hug and a scrog, or something. A hair-ruffle at the very least. Those lights are bloody amazing. Sera's boobs are metallic and she loves them, thank you very much. Does she notice Grace-avoiding-Alexander? Mmm. Depends how obvious it is. Whether they are like magnets, all repel-and-attract, or more subtle, shifting, all drifting currents, eddies and backwaters, undertows. Probably she doesn't notice. Which is strange because sometimes she sees so much, almost everything, the world and its bones and its strange sinews and secrets, the language of it wrapped up in her body, sharp and intimate as muscle-and-bone. But you know, not always. Sometimes she lives inside of it, too. Sometimes she keeps the tenderest parts of herself entirely to herself.
--
Richard Oenomaus of House Quaesitor spends his time at a party staring broodily out of the window. Maybe it isn't broodily but for fuck's sake when you spend your time at a party staring out the window it is like going to a bar and drinking only water and hanging out in the creepy little corridor leading to the bathrooms and not talking to anyone. Bad analogy but, still. Creepy.
She feels like needling him, so she asks him to dance.
By then, she may or may not have LED lights all over her boobs. Maintain your stupid fucking broody dignity now, guy-who-isn't-very-nice-to-his-weird-awesome-dad.
But my heart is wild and my bones are steel
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula
And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free.
- Phosphorescent, Song for Zula