A mobile recording studio is putting on a fan heater in a recording booth in preparation for an actor to do a voiceover on a dramatisation about an invisible workforce in Qatar. A producer is throwing pens at a wall.
At dawn, the worker by the crane drops his yellow hard hat on the floor with all the others and then heads to a bus to take him back to the accommodation block.
All the applause happening right now, everywhere in the world, played at once.
A roar of approval at an awards ceremony. A bar full of musicians drinking.
10.
Rubato
To be naked
It is dark: pitch-black, no light in front, very little behind or to either side. You would struggle to see your own flesh. Initially it feels like the darkness hums, but the more still you are, you realise it probably doesn’t, although you can’t be entirely sure. From somewhere on your right-hand side comes the distant sound of what you imagine to be hot water rushing through a pipe. The pipe is buried beneath the floor, but it doesn’t sound like a particularly big pipe. Soon the rushing stops. Something is cooling down and metal is ticking. On the left, something in the room next door settles itself – a boiled kettle, maybe. Someone is unzipping something very slowly, very quietly. A rustle of stiff cotton slightly to the right. You begin to notice the blood throbbing a little in your ears. Then someone walks slowly towards you. You can hear leather soles on the fibres of the carpet. The tiny sound of a single unbuttoning. The microphone has been placed right next to the ear and we are hearing this button slipping through cotton, close up, in intense, excruciating detail. The gentle twisting-off of a plastic top. A wet razor along skin. Oil slipping between fingers. There is the sound of shortened breath by your ear. The creak of wood on a chair. Maybe the faraway sound of an aeroplane high overhead. A hand slips over nylon. A curtain tugged sideways gently to hide the smallest chink of light creeping in. Someone swallows. The muffled sound of a TV bleeding through the wall as it seems to play a series of sixteen very short documentaries on a loop. Breathing, shallower than before. Another unbuttoning. The drop of a shoe to the floor from a short height. The palm of a hand gently face down on a table. The picking up of a wine glass followed immediately by a tiny chink of teeth on the glass as it meets the lips. A wooden creak again. Liquid settles in a glass. To your left, a resettling of clothes on the floor. In your right ear, a wetness, possibly a mouth. A kiss. A door ajar. The running of water. In your left ear, the sound of skin on skin. A shift – the sound of bare feet on marble. Someone else swallows. A different breath in each ear. Then bare feet on warm, wet marble, just three steps. A bed sheet pulled slowly across a bed. A finger rocking lightly on a switch but not activating it. The spit of wax on a wick as it catches. A tongue separates from the roof of a mouth. An in-breath. An arrangement of hair. A tiny catching of fibres on a naked heel. A dilation, elastic. The ring of metal. A glass bottle placed gently on a floor. Someone swallows. The water stops. An in-breath in your left ear, three drips of distant water in your right. You notice your own breath brushing past the hairs inside your nose. You may be able to hear a raised heartbeat, or blood passing rapidly behind your ears. The soft crease of leather. The sound of a small crack of wood on the chair. The hinge of a door. The hushed creak of a parting limb as it’s bent at a joint. The scrunch of springs under weight. The soft rhythms of skin. The wetness of a mouth. The long slip of flesh. The bristling of hair. The idling of blood.
11.
Moderato
To synthesize
It’s not yet light and an alarm goes off in Kelebija on a waterproof digital watch resting on a small pile of paperwork in a plastic folder. A teacher turns off the alarm and, slowly waking up, tries not to disturb her family sleeping next to her.
Elsewhere someone begins to pull on the end of a roll of Sellotape. We can hear it being pulled out very slowly, stretched. As it unravels, it also warps and twists but mixed in such a way that we still hear the original dry sound underneath. It sounds initially like the person is about to wrap a present, but the pulling of the tape doesn’t stop, it just keeps going and going. From the quality of the noise, the person is clearly trying to create as even a sound as possible, a continual unsticking and separating of the tape from the roll. The mic is slowly moving away from the source of the tape. We begin to realise the tape is likely to continue much longer than we would expect. The sound of the tape itself is getting quieter. This lasts roughly 459 seconds, until the whole roll is undone. By the time we get to the end, the microphone is with the unwound tape but far from the end of the roll in the person’s hand. By this point we have also heard and worked out that there is someone else nearby who is doing their best to be quiet. Their job is to deal with all the sticky tape itself as it peels away from the roll. From the quiet sticky shuffle we can imagine piles of tape on the floor, stuck together in awkward patterns and clumps, impossible to put back on the roll. We hear the tape come to a stop with a muffled, mini jolt and at that moment, torrential rain starts falling on a bus roof in Turkey.
The teacher is now cleaning her teeth in a crude plastic bowl in the corner.
Now the stereo image opens out in a huge landscape. There are 195 teachers, one in each country, starting to unravel rolls of Sellotape in the same continuous fashion as the first person. They pull the tape from a roll attached to a microphone stand; they are now walking backwards, heading precisely in the direction of the single person who is responsible for the largest amount of the world’s pollution.
The rest of the teacher’s family in Kelebija are still asleep as she zips closed her toiletries bag in an even motion near them.
Over the top of the peeling Sellotape, we hear the following human-made noises played out of a number of secondary- or high-school public-address systems.
The nasty, motorised growl of a Nespresso machine. A rabbi slicing crusty bread.
The strange non-pitched growling bleep of reversing bulldozers atop a landfill site. A politician’s electric toothbrush vibrating on a granite worktop.
The crunch of a broken plastic seed tray underfoot. The wheezy crunk of a plastic water bottle uncrunching itself. A vibrator.
A Maersk container ship bumping into a harbour wall as it docks. The hum of a predator drone mic’ed from the ground in Pakistan.
A bleep from a radio inside an abandoned police car. An answer of every bleep from the lifts in every building over eighteen storeys in London.
A parent pumping up a bike tyre. The fall of two-pence pieces in a machine in the Flamingo games arcade in Margate.
An old golf ball hit. A new car door swung open.
A lighting of incense. The flame of a Bunsen burner.
A senior member of a royal family flushes the toilet. The ping of a small stone from under the metal rim of a ceremonial carriage down the Mall.
The brushing of a half-buried skull by an archaeologist. A coach carrying a school’s rugby team pulls in next to a line of waiting parents.
Every American flag in the rain. The tang tang tang on the metal masts in the wind at a sailing school.
A metal detector on a beach in Chile. A flipping of the pages of an Argos catalogue.
Many brides down many church aisles. A field recording of Bashar al-Assad’s head hitting the pillow in preparation to sleep.
Seventy people rubbing credit cards together. An elderly couple driving to a voting station.
An osteopath clicks the neck of a retail manager. All the library books that are open right now suddenly closing together.
All the people writing letters. All the bones rattling in anonymous graves.
People digging a hole. People wrapping a present.
Someone exhausted cutting roses in a greenhouse. Every heart beating faster than normal.
The gun at the start of a marathon for charity. A glass of water put on a $200,000 table.
A black man co
oking another black man dinner. The gush of marble fountains.
Everyone buying something. A missile launch.
The metallic swipe that accompanies every use of a blade in a film, even though it made no noise in real life. The sound of a group of extras on a film set trying to dance quietly but excitedly even though there’s no music on in the background.
The drop of tablets into glass trays. The slip of Prince Charles’s skin against a woman’s arm.
The wrapping of a body in a blanket. The boarding queue of a low-cost airline.
The clunk hiss of every can of Coca-Cola in Colombia being opened at the same time. The ring of Roger Ames’s mobile phone on an overly polished mahogany dresser.
An ambulance driving over a speed bump. The bang of a swing bin in the ladies’ toilet at the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company.
The head of a dead refugee bumping loosely against the side of a lorry, as yet undiscovered. The sound just after all the air conditioning is turned off at the Daily Mail.
A strong, hot shower directly onto the head of a bald man. A leakage from an industrial petrochemical plant.
The grind of an African stone mill in a recreation of a scene shown in the Powell Cotton Museum. The setting down of a tray of alcoholic cocktails at an open-air bar in a hotel in Bahrain.
The pop of a light bulb blowing. The opening of a box of protein snack bars.
The shimmer of shopping trolleys. Every boat sinking together.
The poke of a straw into a giant cup of Mountain Dew. The dropping of a large spanner in the maintenance room of a hospital.
The small flicker of sticky noise made after having applied lipstick as someone parts their lips. Two thousand hotel doors slammed shut.
Part of the sound of someone being stoned to death. Part of a car wash.
A forest uprooted. The squeal of a dog chew toy.
The tick of keys on a keyboard as someone types a complaint. A recreation of the sound of the building at Rana Plaza collapsing made by a musician using mainly coat hangers and security tags stolen from Primark stores.
A packet of free nuts on a train sliding across a plastic table at speed. Someone drawing the curtains before another night of abuse.
The loading of a crossbow. The buzzer marking the end of a student basketball game.
A cathode-ray TV set turning on. The stapling of a stomach in a cosmetic surgery operation.
The telephone wake-up call from a hotel’s front desk. The kiss on a child’s head.
A breaking leg slowed down significantly so we hear the fibres tear and snap. A plane taking off heard in the background while someone is printing an article about voter disenfranchisement in Ohio.
The pulling out of a tooth with string attached to a large rock thrown over a cliff. A cream applied to a rash on someone else’s back.
Wire cutters on a chain-link fence. Murky water in a swimming pool lapping at the underside of an inflatable pool animal.
A safe lock being picked. A child’s black nylon tie being put on by an adult.
A brief summary of weddings, parties, funerals and births through a hood and ear muffs. A general sips rum.
The spit of eggs and bacon in a pan. The noises of a CT scanner.
A forest fire set by arson. A waterfall of Lego.
A thin plastic stirrer for tea plucked by a bored child. A million pieces of disposable cutlery tipped down the chimney of a country house.
Football studs in a tunnel. A police taser.
A handful of olives thrown down the toilet in room 720 in Moscow Park Inn. Every stuffed animal from a hospital flown from kites.
A killer whale bangs against bars. A leather baseball on a window, but it doesn’t break.
The creak of windows in Hungarian hotels. The dropping of a can of Red Bull at a prehistoric monument.
An artist writing with chalk on a blackboard a brief description of the imagined sound of all the plugs simultaneously being pulled out of unused baths. An excerpt of someone assembling a wardrobe in entirely the wrong way.
The empty train carriage 006 waiting to leave Saint Petersburg station. A goth in a river, head under water, stroking the outside of her ears.
The sound of cancer cells reproducing unheard in the body of someone going swimming at dawn. The creak of an antique floorboard as someone tiptoes across it in the dark.
The hammering of a large fence post. The smashing of a radio with a spade.
A cicada on the pillar of a temple in Kyoto. Tights being pulled up.
A coin in a wishing well. A bedspring compacted.
The edited sound of a huge block of luxury flats being built from scratch, sped up so that from breaking ground to fully occupied takes just fifteen seconds. Poker chips being organised into piles.
Prawn balls, just out of the fryer in a Chinese takeaway in Frankfurt, settling at the bottom of a polystyrene cup. An office chair spins against the corner of a desk.
A soldier coming straight through a door without opening it. The slide of a grubby beige computer mouse on a Homer Simpson mouse mat.
The crackle of plastic around a tampon. The robbing of a bank.
The boiling of sugar in huge vats. The slip of rope against the skin of 13,000 necks.
A time-stretch of all the food in a chain of themed restaurants going rotten. A drag on a menthol cigarette.
Every scream happening right now.
The Sellotape stops.
The teacher’s family are now awake and are lining up together with others. One of the children is wearing headphones. A bird sings, a truck passes and uses its horn in a long, unpleasant blast. We hear it recorded from a mic set on top of a tower some distance away. The adults shuffle forward.
Wind passes through holes in a wall with an eerie sound. A man in uniform is starting to run.
One by one, each sound now played from all the outside speakers that usually play music or announcements, such as those at sports stadiums or those attached to red-brick walls of Frankie & Benny’s restaurants, or from the tops of mosques, or racetracks, or drive-in cinemas, or train stations, or ferry ports, or landing docks, or loading bays, or town centres, or part of giant screens in Shibuya. From grey, nasal-sounding speakers at village fêtes, or along the finishing lines to city marathons. At the Mexican border, or at night markets, or at Israeli checkpoints, or hi-tech advertising billboards, or at petrol stations, or at free parties in the woods, or Brazilian carnivals, or car forecourts, or at protest rallies, or school sports days. From the tops of tanks, or near ski lifts, or suspended from helicopters, or at fairgrounds, or as torture into shipping containers, or on Ibiza beaches, or from the top deck of a politician’s bus as it drives past, we hear: All the hotel washing machines churning away right now, all the hikers hiking upwards, everyone eating crisps right now, all the ferries leaving port, all the phones ringing, all the showers running, all the fires in grates in houses, all the cable cars setting out, every text message received right now, all the joggers on treadmills, all the pans on stoves, all the cheers at fascist rallies, all the swimmers in rivers, all the industrial fires, all the people opening bills, tearing paper, all the toilets flushing, all the cutlery on all the plates at the ends of meals, all the beer from pumps, all the silent debt, all the typing of racist or misogynist comments on keyboards right now, all the papers in exams being turned over at once, all the guard dogs barking, all the escalators going up, all the burglar alarms going off, all the light aircraft lining up, all the chicken being fried, all the cremulators grinding down human remains to ash, everyone getting dressed for a christening, someone your age walking towards danger, all the hair being cut, all the contactless bleeps in shops and at train turnstiles, all the football games about to start, all the getting undressed, all the tractors reversing, all the hockey sticks being loaded into changing rooms, all the popping of knee
s out of joints, all the children dropped off at school, all the train doors closing, all the punches landing on faces, all the sewing machines, all the air conditioning in courtrooms, all the patients on beds on the move down hospital corridors, all the peeling-off of wallpaper by builders, all the leather soles on wet stones, all the bricks thrown through windows, many copies of this book burning, all the trees being felled with chainsaws, all the suitcases clicking open, all the printing of lobbyists’ business cards, all the dancers in dance studios in South America warming up without music, all the babies breastfeeding, all the social workers ringing doorbells or pushing buzzers, all the tinned prunes peeled open, all the speedboat engines revving, all the whistles from owners to their dogs, all the overdoses, all explosion sound effects being auditioned in film suites, all the cheers at a pub quiz on hearing the answer to a difficult question, all the loudest people shouting, all the apples being eaten at once right now, all the chefs sharpening knives, all the shivering. All the people unfolding large stiff maps outside in the wind, all the cleaning of windows, all the people about to jump off cliffs or mountains with flying things on their backs, all the water fountains, all the men about to commit rape. All the people climbing ladders, all the people digging holes, all the planting of trees in shopping malls, all the coughing from air pollution, all the people in factories making things they can’t afford to buy themselves, all the pumping of chemicals into fracking boreholes, all the heaters at the entrances to shops, all the plastic things melting in fires, all the flies on corpses, all the cracking of rotten walnuts, all the people pumping the chests of other people whose hearts have stopped, all the desperate writers in rooms, all the slashing of skin with knives. All the chains, all the locks, all the metal bars, all the lawyers, all the journalists, all the bars of chocolate snapped. All the crying, all the tears of disbelief, all the weeping into hands, all the sobbing in showers, all the tearful faces raised to the sky. All the anger, all the violent shuddering, all the people in queues, at checkpoints, being searched, stopped by police unnecessarily. All the fish being caught in ponds and rivers. All the baking of birthday cakes. All the sticking-up of posters to gigs. All the breaking of rocks. All the waste, the mess, the excess, the rubbish, the bins, the bending, the burying, the burning. All the people running. All the people opening curtains. All the rowing boats setting out on lakes. All the people getting into taxis to a party. All the people putting on their wedding outfits. All the people passing an exam. All the people reading the last page of a book. All the people bounding downstairs, shouting with joy.
The Music Page 12