One steps into a space already laced in language, whether drawn, heard, hung, accidental or empty. David passes me the mic—I refuse to read words. So I sing the alphabet, impulsive vocal pulsations that are absorbed by the walls, bodies and attitudes around me.
Improvisation-is-the-stuff-of-life.
Letters form worlds, echoing and tracing paths from larynx to charcoal. A is not A. It is my breath, 34 years of memories, and the 180-dollar microphone it is bouncing through. Abstracting the alphAphonic choir I reach B. Be careful in front of the art crowd. The singing alphabet is creating space to notice the underlying groundswell of Robert Andrew’s work. Through the ever shifting field of receptivity another life form sings to us as I belt through B—leaning in-between letters the audience begins to notice the subtle ruffling of Carbon. C. The residue of volatile relationships slowly transcribes registers of language on white walls. Timescales collide between human comprehension of wood and fire to the formation of the language of the planet. But where is the smoke in here? Could it be the loud but invisible haze of the double bind?
C emerges like an apparition and through its resonance in my mouth celebrates the cathedral-esque acoustics of the building. C moves freely between the cheeks and transforms into a polymorphic scape. C isn’t caught in between other more rounded letters. C helps us listen and curse. Like carbon, it exists because of exchanges, bonding, breaking up and transferring. Carbon Culture is dirty. D. This letter hits behind the teeth. Teeth formed over millennia, like preserved ore from ships. D feels quick and sharp. The sound is of a string pulling towards E. E. Nasal: it’s easy to project the voice and head deeper into the throat. I am swimming in the eassssiness of E. But nothing is easy here. We’ve gotten used to standing so uncomfortably with each other. H. Hidden postures, fragile smiles, guilty comforts, crick necks, confused kindness and urban slogans. I notice people listening to the distance between one letter and the other. They are noticing the small and potent movements of an alphabet that doesn’t speak English, or a singular Art (cult)ure.
The alphabet that my body is absorbing and producing creates surprising sonic marks, whispers of an ancient song from a Proto-Sinaitic script crafted in Ancient Egypt. These vowels and cadences were formed to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in Egypt, moving away from the exclusionary hieroglyphs of the Pharaohs. What do these sounds do in relation to Andrew’s language and its hidden yet clear-to-see gestures?
Language is not about proficiency, grammar, spelling or robust vernacular. It’s a series of times, proximities and movements filled with the intention of the one who sings it. Of the ones who share it. Of the ones who receive it. Language does not signify semantics – the singing alphabet is not writing over what is already there. These sounds are interplanetary, forged from the sounds of the first utterances of thunder, fire, earthquakes, lava, birthing and stars, indifferent yet contained within the fabric of all words. The word didn’t make flesh. The unstable hot-tempered breath of atmospheres made words. And these words make and unmake worlds.
And what of the places of ums, hums, the awkward silence, the cussing, the climactic grunts, the disappointed sighs, the tired ahhs, the indifferent huh? These are the places where our social alphabet comes into contact with the chimps, the whales, the wind and so on. These in-between jerk reactions create tumbling hybrids and possibilities beyond the logical isolation of words. They are the mineral fragments disguised in tweets, lullabies, sermons and essays.
F. F hardly has a tone, it is all fluffy muscle closed tight between the lips. The F$#@ of things is clear. The mistakes and the frivolity of it all…. I am lost for words… the sensorial serenades I’m using now. To seduce you. Yet the singing alphabet, the carbon choir, is not words and not the seductive sirens of myth. My Greekness is also sewn into this convergence of the English language and the violent origins of multi-time coloniality—the spreading of one sonic world and the many deaths of an(other).
One does not need to understand these utterances in order to feel the intent, to understand the ‘something’ of it. As I squeak, squirt, groan, shiver and twirl my tongue around the room, description and presentation fade into the distance and something more present reveals itself. It’s the ‘something’ that the work won’t lay out in words.
W. Double you. When I watch other people produce sound out loud in public space I see red hot flowers form around their neck and lower cheeks. Like a boa around their vertebra, the social conventions and the amplifying of their voice gives rise to blood lilies. Once they have finished sounding it takes a long time for the red-lights of self-consciousness to fade.
V. Whose Voice is speaking me?
Skipping letters, and gently transposing the civility of order. The singing alphabet begins to sing:information-made-tactile. A spectator approaches me after the performance and said “G. I didn’t even notice that you were singing the alphabet. It wasn’t until you got to M that I thought I just heard L. And it all came together! ”
*hum
Ensounding—with Andrew’s work I sit in the uncomfortable knowing of not knowing but really knowing that there are things about this country I will never understand, hindered by the stringy puppetry of certain wor(l)ds. To really sing through difference together is not contained within words, within the understandable-for-some in the formats of the few, it’s beyond words and beyond description, it’s beyond English even though I am using it as a tool now. It’s through utterances, marks, a willingness to stay with chance and it’s the stark realization of the complex language-as-relation that has come before me that enables me to simply make a sound. Zzzzzz