Sound with a body

On the wall a sound, once made, is a thing. A colander is heaped with clear glass rings of it; a trumpet’s bell is stuffed with feathers, a whisper’s worth; under a bell hanging low in a derelict foundry the dust lies in rings; a struck gong sends a crescent of its own bronze off through an olive garden; a small loudspeaker on a beach lifts a whole breaking wave of sand into the air, and another, on a jetty, lays a long triangle of stormy sea perfectly flat; a radio dish catches its message as a column of red sand, by weight; a snapped piano string carries on through a thread of air; a speaker cabinet that turned itself up too far takes itself to pieces.

The workshop’s own sounds are lighter: “Every bleep in this workshop is four numbers and a wave.” The The metronome keeps time and the small bell goes ting. The codex proposes that on the wall a sound stays where it was put until something moves it, and that the speakers are somebody putting it to work. This entry is proposed by the codex, from pictures on the wall that are all machine-made, and is not canon until approved.