Some writings on audible edge by Wild Oats
i. the woodwind players
three woodwind players are playing in tune with one another. although their instruments sound like three different birds, they are managing to have a productive and respectful conversation. sometimes there are very long pauses, but they never feel uncomfortable. the silence feels good and necessary like the space between two words or the space between two thoughts.
it is hard to listen to three bird calls at once. when a cockatoo, a pigeon and a ibis all sing together, we do not hear their songs. instead we hear a “cacaphony”, a latin word which translates quite literally to “shit sound”. but, the three woodwind players are not simply screeching and cooing and honking into the hyde park wind. they are pooling their respective dialects together to form a creole, a lingua franca of international avian discourse.
it must feel good to harmonise with others, or at least to play in tune. whenever i take my banjo out of the house, it always feels as if i had left it in a really hot car. no matter how much i try and twist my pegs, i can never keep it in tune for very long. before i can get to the end of my phrase, the strings will go sour and then all i’ll hear is sourness and not the good melodies of the people around me. whether i stop to retune or not, the song will soon come to a whimpering halt..
so this quiet, endless, smooth-flowing woodwind is serving to show me all the things i cannot do, which causes me to feel what they call “lament”. yet, i am glad that the woodwind players are playing and feeling in tune, and i am glad that everyone else in the room is in tune with them too. but for me, i’ll have to keep twisting my pegs.
ii. a josten intermission
so long as there is a clear AM frequency out there somewhere, things are okay.. my mind goes crystal clean in the following silence when the MC crouches down with hands on knees and in a wide-eyed reverent whisper asks us if we have tried the bar’s “cold toddy”. it is the role of an mc to tune and retune their audience, to hype them up or simmer them down. with this one mysterious question i am strumming crystal-clean. i trail the nub of my pencil along the bones of my teeth and they make a beautiful sound.
iii. the curious case of melanie moles
it is an acoustic guitarist called jameson and a drummer called maria mole. as i have mentioned many times, the drum is my favourite instrument. i know what it is and what it can do, and i also know that every drum contains a secret reservoir of ineffable magic. a good drummer knows to use their drumstick as a magic wand, tapping into this reservoir to relinquish a new drumming sound.
the secret sound of mrs mole sounds less like a drumkit and more like the hot tub at bayswater waves. like a gator in the okefenoke swamp i submerge my head and listen to the ant-like clicking of bubbles as they sparkle like prosecco in the cavities of my nose. jameson the guitarist is being very mischevous. like a djinn fairy he picks a desert pattern, trying to trick me with a classic mirage. nice try jameson. i know better than to dive head first and take a really big gulp. as i said before, your lagoon is actually just a hot tub, filled with old guys.
the other day i turned my glasses into baking paper by rubbing them on a cordoroy shirt. i also forgot to bring my binoculars so i cannot see how mary mole is making this rattle-ing tic-tac sound. apparently with chopsticks, which is a really good idea.
i feel very one with this drumming. all my appendages are shaking about and my teeth are chattering too. i feel like an interesting dog who just got out of the pool. but a gnome-like man in front of me keeps turning around and giving me “a glare”. i block out his rudeness by closing my eyes. it is not my fault no one else is in tune with this music. no one except a very young boy in a newsboy cap who is doing a fortnite dance. i see fellow writer maddy doncan rattling her limbs too and i am glad, so glad, to be in tune with this drummer and this jameson and this madeline and this incredible flossing boy. all these drips with the unmoving heads? they can eat my bulldust.