Session 6: Singing Bowl

Join us in this workshop to find your creative voice!

Sounds

  • Tibetan Singing Bowl
  • Elliptical Machine
  • Beer Bottle Pipes
  • Fall Bugs
  • Sweeping Dirt
  • Grocery Store Interior
  • Rain Gutter
  • Shuffling Cards
  • Wooden Bridge Footsteps
  • Dictionary Pages

Lucas’s Result

Night Out

The ground began ringing the day before last. Not like a telephone ring or a big computer or anything like that, more like the sound you get when something old and pure rubs together. I guess that makes sense, being that it’s coming from the ground. You don’t get much more old and pure than that.

A lot of folks are trying to figure this damn thing out. Sure there’s the religious nuts, screaming that the end of days are upon us. That’s been going on for thousands of years. But there are all kinds of other nuts out there too. Folks selling listening machines, tuning forks, special diggers, and listening devices. I guess I can’t talk though.

I’m selling my own brand of madness. Whisky. The bar was empty on this first night when the low metallic hum started vibrating the floor boards, but sure enough, the bar was packed with the usual drunks the following afternoon, and even more people looking to forget their troubles by the evening. God bless ‘em.

Bastards. Goddmammit. This place is a mess. It’s the morning of the third day now. Broken glass and used condoms. Can’t blame ‘em. I wonder though. If this thing gets sorted out. And there is a reasonable explanation, where do we go from here? Do you just pretend like nothing happened? I doubt it. If we do survive, you know, not get ground up by some alien force or whatever, I bet there are going to be plenty that don’t accept the same old 9 to 5 gig that they had going before this all started.

I need a break. Not just from sweeping, either. I’ve got to get out of this basement bar. What if this is the end? Am I going to spend down here watching a bunch of drunks living like there’s no tomorrow, and when there is no tomorrow, not be able to spend the money? No.

Come on down if you want a drink. The door will be unlocked. Just don’t bust up the place too bad. Y’know just in case I have to come back. Good luck my friend. Oh yeah, make sure you sign my guest book. Who knows, when we get turned to dust, somebody might want to read it a hundred thousand years from now.

Carolyn’s Result

Is it too much to suggest
that all things swirl
when some scratch, and some stop?
The background leans forwards
when the inside of the bowl flips
over the slip, the edge, the out.
Here comes movement.
A comet leftover from oldest ice,
only knowing sunlight, sister
to the wind on a northern slope,
a wind caught inside a jar,
an orbit born long enough of matter
to spin and trill, a wave
crested enough to sweep over its own top,
to dip down, earthen,
gathered into a human voice,
a mechanical voice, a water voice,
pumped through valve again,
into air again, into rock again.
Turn me over. Mold and spread as
pulp or clay my form. Take to me
mortar, stirred with lye and
build from me a sturdy place.
Coarse. Smoothing.
I come apart. A part of
a thing with moving parts.
I come down. And up.
I turn like a ribbon on
a taffy pull.

-CD

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