play track 1

Na is a movement not much different than the movement of the hand to the head or from pure abstraction to sentimental melody. The sound emitting from old radios and instruments sculpted out of dark wood, tarnished brass and the bones of a bombed and forgotten orchestra. It is like shifting daydreams or sleeping on a blue rubber blow up mattress in the middle of a dark lake. A collection of sounds made from my body, objects that I found spaces recorded or your body and spaces that I made with objects that I recorded and arranged in rooms filled with dry grass and warm stones. Arranged so that they flow into each other. It is as if your body is made of wax or ice or air as it melts away into other environments and you wake from a dream within a dream. Slightly tangible memories from the past linger. The rain wetting your face music drifting across Indonesian landscape harps in a room of dry sticks and tossed grain. A bridge watching traffic and your head inside a clock with steps leading down into a breathy oboe and woman plucking a bird with her long simian toes. Everything dissolves and you float the sounds images and colors swirl and you are swallowed by something warm.
Sometimes the complexity is hard to see as anything but color and vibration and for some that is all it will be and good. Voices slide around and na na na is all around. Na the sound that is a breath out after the tongue has lingered against the roof of the mouth. Na is like a first word. A question while also a statement of I am here and I see and I hear and I taste and I feel. The sense of being swells and surrounds like a dense blanket. There is a little fear and longing. Something is missing or escaping. The colors turn dark and swirl around and then break apart adding to the ambiguity. It is not panic but it is a little uncomfortable. Play with the darkness. An orchestra is sneaking in on little rafts lit with pumped up white gass lanterns. Violins and voices appear and it crumbles apart again. Surging like bees in a swarm swirling down with tiny human voices. There is a returning of ghost violins and then more insects and they swarm back and forth. It is best to shut your eyes from the distraction and sink into it without resistance. If you resist you will not feel the loosening of the bones and the twitching of your fingers.
Falling into a snake hole an ant maze a robotic clock shop and little hammers are tapping at your temples. It is time to wake up, get up get moving. There are soldiers and fiddlers and old radios. Time to wake up. It is all fogging up and then suddenly sharp again as the rattlesnakes and the crickets jump around you as you cringe on the floor trying to go back asleep. Too much too soon. I wanted to stay where I was you say. But it is no use the rude awakening is not going away. You are in a ticking clock factory and you are late and lost and spinning around bumping into things. You give in and walk around paying attention to the tiny machines. The little birds and mice and snakes are all made from the discarded bodies of complicated musical instruments. The air is crisp and cool and you began to tap at the things around you in rhythm with sticks that litter the floor. One of your sticks is strangely jointed and has the head of a laughing shrew on the end of it. You find you have grown extra arms and you are beginning to resemble a one man band mechanical beetle playing the guts of a high pitched pipe organ and picking up drums and bells and flutes to play with your many mouths. It is ok to dance like a broken spider puppet. You slowly become metal and wood and taut strings. You pull toward yourself more and more little noise makers and soon all the sounds are being made by you. You loose the distinction between yourself and your instruments and start to absorb the factory clock that surrounds you In the end you notolice curl into yourself and go back to sleep.
You wake under a bridge in the rustling grass turnpike dripping wood stream over under pass and motors sleek by. Bags of dry grass and metal boxes and fire and the soft purr of cat machine whine silence. Bare feet. Sleeping giants itchy dry skin you tiptoe through climb over looking for the vibration source smoky air sand in eyes. Waves of color disrupt your vision bugs sitting on your ears clapping together mice teeth and everything shifts earth purring suddenly into a maze of blue and yellow squiggles and your skin itches. You cuddle up with a sleeping giant and listen. His rough soft furs woven with buttons musty greasy. One giant gets up to shake out his blanket and the blanket manta ray like flies off and he chases it trying to catch with a dry branch quietly not wanting to wake the others. The cave has filled with water and all the giants float like logs, still asleep they began to move apart on waves created by their big lungs working wind. The walls of the cave are illuminated with glowing fungus and there are silent bats with tiny rusty wheels turning in their mouths. The bats are carrying lanterns in their feet and make the shadows of the now drifting giants shrink and grow. You pull out a map and try to catch the fleeting light to see where you are but decide to just rub the paper on your face instead. Ahead you see abandoned play ground equipment sticking out of the water and you float in and around the swings and jungle jims. Your map has gotten larger and you try to make it into a suit of cloths while standing in the swing. The walls of the cave are sandy and began to crumble in all around you displacing water and turning it a muddy gold. The air is electric and you notice the sky has opened up above you and you float up into it toward the stars in your white paper suit covered in city streets. The stars swirl about you and disappear into a dark hole like a tub drain above your head sending you into darkness.
You awake on the back of what might be a lumbering elephant surrounded by sleeping monkeys. The world around you is grainy like an old film. Wet air and wet branches. Warm smelly elephant heat. Overhead power lines birds watching stony eyes. You sit up and notice you are in a mountain city possibly Katmandu. You slide off and into a quiet temple and run you hand over ancient carvings giving you feelings of memories that you can’t quite recall. Your socks are warm. The air pressure seems to increase. Your head is being drilled into by some aggravated spirit. There are many of them and you try to hide. You fall to you knees clutching your head. It is so full of pressure and you feel as if you will pass out. You awake bound and gagged on a rickety dock surrounded by reads and wind and waves. You try to untie yourself and only manage to fall into the water. You are able to stand but your hands and feet are still tied and you cannot climb onto the dock. You hop to the shore in the soft mud and throw yourself exhausted into the dry grass at the bank half in and half out of the water. You listen for people but hear nothing but strange buzzing insects.The dry grass is telling you the sun is good. Floating bronze plates appear and scrape food out onto the ants. A strange excuse for a jazzy flute quintet is eaten alive by a bad speaker. You hop onto an motorcycle made of bleached cattle bones and burrow into the ground like a mole. There you find a nice cozy den of blind companions to sleep with.
You awake in a orchestra pit naked and wedged between to very fat warm sweet smelling ladies. You think that they must be opera singers on a break. You see you are also in a eagle’s nest prop filled with pearls that you rub on your teeth to see if they are real. You nestle back down trying to relax as the orchestra is warming up. This is your favorite part. They began to play and the lights dim. You close your eyes and relax and doze.