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The First Sound a Girl Can Make

   
after Kimberly Alidio




A setting of sun tones says blue. The changing of colours, where red and orange are exchanged with blue. A presence that cracks through the mirror of the sky. I look up to the blue, throwing my head back. If only all is blue. The sound is one of containment. Blue shares its sun tones with the clouds. That is why they are wispy and hang across the sky. The wind often has to chase them away. Blue is a benevolent colour. Generous with its sounds. Head thrown back, ready to amplify any sound to come. If only all is blue. A held vocal is layered with distorted frequencies, and blue blooms. The humans below run around in panic. It is not often the sky speaks to them.




 
Women pause at the sound of the blue talking, a portrait of calmness.




The color blue is not unreasonable and allows the sun to maintain its position in the sky. In straight lines, crooked, fraying at the ends. At the end of each line, the sun bursts into a miasma, that is, a color bomb. Unimaginable colors take the place of the burst open sun, reminding humans and stars that we are all but vessels for colors. A gruesome sight, no doubt, as red pools at the base of the miasma. For a good show, humans will throw their bodies away. The alphabet system is the start of their bodily revolution. Though the body will disappear along with the wind that throws the miasma away, words that are rendered two-dimensionally remain.





A record for the women. Hierarchy does not mean exploitation. The women had to learn the language of the color blue. Learn the articulation of colors. Meaning becomes suspended in the air, flat against a surface. The color blue is prone to transformation. A pair of gelatinous pork trotters. Surely a feast is in order. The women observe the passing of moons and decide the coming moon phase is the right time. They got together to throw their bodies against a surface. The result was a red affair, though the clouds saw bits of themselves in the ritual. The color blue claps its hand together, a careful gesture of conviviality. The head is a peculiar sight. A funny instrument panning the head as it shakes no no no. Bodies are thus disposable in such a society. Only colors and the articulation of its scale are revered here. The truth is, the women are scared of colors. The primordial desire that stirs inside of them as they encounter blue. But they know it through another name. A name intends where there is noise that soothes cacophony. A burst of white noise. White is not absence, goes the first dictum. The mouth opens, displacing the old air with the new air. White is not absence, though the air would like to plead their case. The women stay near the ground, some favoring the canopy of trees, believing themselves to be part bird. Looking out into a flat surface, a portrait of calmness.





A dense field of sound, a relaxation, a ready of space. In other words, arrival. The old is displaced by the new, creating the figure of the emigre. A look of surprise. Or suspicion. The one figure in the train station. Movement is encouraged in this colonized land, though the cargo is not allowed to speak. Sounds, or white noise. The space left between a noise and a wayward one. Discordance or the illegality of consonance. Cuts and clips of vocals into a rhythmic scat - white noise rise and surge into a line, an upward curve, destined to drop to its knees. Surely there is another way to end a sound. But termination is the most elegant solution. A flask of translucent liquid cling on to the glass walls. Did you hear that? A melody contour repeats its footsteps, retracing the path of its ancestor. The melody will eventually have to set off in a different direction, repetition not being an actual mode of transportation. A realisation of a circle that goes back to itself. Will someone please confirm the measure of a circle and claim it as an exercise of futility. Smaller bodies - half the size of a tree - roll around this place, with their head ending up where their legs were at. Karma. Or the karmic need to repeat one’s mistakes. Bodies roll again and again. Therefore: a recording of recordings. We are not surprised by the half-life of the sound. Rolling bodies produce a melody that pleases the most cantankerous of colors. In the summer, that is red, with its anger issues. The clouds never liked red much. Blue looks better next to white, which is not a color of absence. A swoosh, or the need for the line to continue. A trajectory that is unstoppable or so we thought.





What? Squeak. Squeal. Squirm. Scream? The possibility of a sound is unlimited. Repeat after each other. The body takes hold of a stick and swings it around. The air is still being displaced but movement is not always bad. Blue swirls under the sun, like everything else on this colonized land. An epidemic of skin-related ailments swept across the wooden houses. The women are told to not interfere, as bags of skin show up everywhere. Collectors picked up the skin bags and started to create a surplus value day with an artificial market for its consumption. High pitched sounds, bubbles and popping, smacking, the bodies thrown against each other. Did you hear it? I do. I do. Blue collecting its congratulations through the bodies on the ground. The caked earth is bidding their time to form a body. The lotus root parts. A species’ survival is dependent on the encounter.





A metallic chunk hurls its way across another metallic chunk. Will you listen to that? White noise is pleasing to one’s ears. That does not mean one can listen to them all the time. The sticks are still being waved in the air. And so, the show must go on. Air takes the beating of their life, being pushed around with a grunt. Perhaps there is an erotic energy to the path, though no one, not the white, or the air, asked for more. Drifting into the next measure, and the circle is left with its numerical value. The ascension of numbers demonstrates the scale of beings, divided into the two-legged and the four-legged. Both are vulnerable to the blue across the sky, streaks of white.





Teeter. A state of being more delicate to the women. It is after all the flow state a four-legged creature aspires to, as the odds fall, and the possibility of chance is left. Where next? Having four legs afforded the women an almost unlimited range of places to go. And the legs are just happy to be of use. But this is the era of separation. The mind is separate from the mortal body and the soul is meant to be mastered over. Luckily the women are exempt from the dictums of their times. Their mind goes to a place that always flows, and that is how the women got to the river. They wore clothes that are heavy and refuse colors. Being a follower of blue has taught them that colors mean something and so refusing it is the greatest form of freedom.






Note


This piece is borne out of an act of bibliomancy from Kimberly Alidio’s Teeter. The following lines from Teeter have been collaged into this piece:


“A held vocal [tone] is layered with distorted frequencies” (4)
“Panning the head shakes no no no” (5)
“A name intends where there is noise that soothes” (6)
“A dense field of sound, a relaxation, a [reading] of space” (7)
“Cut and clips of vocals into a rhythmic scat” (8)
“What? Squeak! What? Squeak! Sqeauky-squeak! Whatwhat what!” (11)
“High pitched sounds, bubbles & popping, smacking” (12)






Si-Min Chong is a writer and translator from Singapore. She makes work about vessels: women, trees, and snakes. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, she holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University.