wall of silence

Since there was Phil Spector there must surely have been his opposite, a man who did not layer a wall of sound but instead its opposite, the progenitor of a towering and insurmountable wall of silence, non-layer upon non-layer of the densest quiet imaginable. His production work didn't make him famous but neither did he maniacally shoot a woman in the face on a paranoid bender. Indeed,this hypothetical person probably would have actually made a decent partner or spouse, had he ever gotten to know anyone closely.

Objectors would point out that a wall of silence by definition requires solitude, and I would accept this argument with the mild objection that somewhere in the world there surely is a mime whose destiny it is to love the anti-Spector with all her or his heart, to understand him fully and within that silence to establish an implied overlap of frequency ranges far beyond the scope of human hearing, far beyond the scope of sound itself, a resonant wave field or subnet on which thought and spirit mix freely, a communion of understanding and implication ahead of and around normal speech.

What is the anti-Spector's modus operandi? Simply the removal of noisemaking devices from the grasping range of passersby, beyond the reach of toddlers, drunks, sports fans, hunters, referees, construction workers, experimental guitarists, oboeists, vice principals, cheerleaders, prognosticators and agitators, harpies, candidates for town council, religious proselytizers, stepfathers, argumentative potential divorcees, etc.

It was never your right to scream at her that way, it was never your god-damned right.

delaware

Nat and I are up early this morning. The air smells like Canada; it's crisp and perfect, like a fresh apple left out over night in an oak bucket. We walk to Wawa and I get you a Times and me a coffee. Nat wants to drink the coffee so we have breakfast, Greek yogurt with Gerber banana mixed in, a small bottle of formula.

We're listening to Monk's Misterioso , its joyful major sixths like a friendly arachnid who lost 2 legs in the war but whose heart melted for love and now he wanders the land, regaling the children with stories of all he's seen. To live and breathe, my children, to eat flies, the colors and sounds and the sweet noble spinning of the Earth. Nat and I like this, he's nodding his head and dancing along to the ribbons of saxophone.

When the Monk finishes and breakfast's done I look through the CDs and find a Death Cab one, the one with the drawn out "I will possess your heart" and not much else I've bonded with (still a listen in progress). I can't figure out what would put me in the mood for that until I remember a day last summer before Nat was out in the air when we drove to Delaware for A's sister's wedding. We had some time so we stopped at Rehoboth. On the way we'd heard the song on the radio and we couldn't stop singing the chorus, which was all we'd retained.

You were so strong carrying our son. That day it was like 100 but you wanted to be on the beach so we were and it hit me how everything was going to change and now it has, only better than I let myself hope. It's incredible to me what you did and what you've done, it's incredible to me that we're here and he's here, over our heads in love.