“Beneath every audible and jointly recognized utterance is a world of unheard, unthought and accidental aural excretions.”
He says each word with a steady, privately educated surety, confident of his critique.
“This is the realm of unsound and unmeaning; the radical potentiality of John Cage’s collapsed binary between silence and noise, the burbled inanities of Lars von Trier’s Idiots.”
The group listens intently, straining to hear each delicious syllable, crowding closer to the acrid aroma of his extinguished smoking pipe. His goatee fizzes with excitement.
“Those who wonder ‘how does it sound’ or ‘what does it mean’ are nothing but reactionary amateurs in the business of understanding. From the first mourning mews of an orphaned Velociraptor, to the impending dread of a robotic alarm clock ringing in the distance, life-forms on planet earth have basically never understood anything, let alone been able to express it.”
A wave of gasps and yawns passed through the group, all eyes set down.
The silence stretches out like ash from an urn tossed in the wind.
“But if this is so,” a new voice whispers, barely audible above the breathing of the group, “How then can we understand what you’re saying, how can you express it?”
“My dear. My dear,” the man responds, “of course you can’t, and neither can I.”
Glasgow’s Acrid Lactations are Susan Fitzpatrick & Stuart Arnot. They have a newish CDR, The Rotten Opacity Of It All (All This Rot), out on Chocolate Monk. The above audio is an excerpt from this recording.
• Chocolate Monk: http://chocolatemonk.co.uk
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