July 28, 1994: Where? There.

That sound.  Yesterday I returned to that sound, a sound I first heard sometime in 1997.  Though the truth is I'm sure I heard the sound much earlier, well, at least a year earlier, sometime in 1996, when Eric and I became curious about this band Rodan that everyone was talking about.  Well, one particular person was talking about them, Marc Pilvinsky, a writer for Flagpole Magazine (Athens, GA).  I think Eric must have picked up the CD, and it really didn't appeal to me: too much of a heavy metal sound.  I thought it was odd that this Flagpole writer would have liked the band so much.  I was even reassured that I didn't have to like Rodan when once, at the High Hat Café, I heard some hipsters actually making fun of Pilvinsky ("Marc Pilvinsky likes heavy metal..."). 

But I taped the album from Eric, and started listening to it at odd moments, or maybe the sound (that sound, or just some other sound?) came back to me when I least expected it.  In any case I gradually realized that this band was doing something, or something was taking place on that album that I had never heard before.  And I also realized, listening closer, that that sound was in fact a theme in some of the songs, especially "The Everyday World of Bodies."  It could be that the sound in the lyrics has nothing to do with the sound that I had been hearing and not understanding (hearing because I didn't understand it), but it helped me name it, gave me the words and the affect to designate it:  that sound.

the window is open / the bed is empty / the drawer half open / the clock's unwound / we make the sound / we make the sound / we make the sound / of air / hear it / escaping / something / everything.

Jason Noble is the lead singer on that song.  He died of cancer on August 4, 2012.  It's not too sentimental to note simply that "The Everyday World of Bodies" (released in 1994) was both a recognition of a cancer to come (a cancer, some kind of cancer, some kind of uncontrollable effect of the body) and a negation of cancer as such.  The song ends with a performative utterance, an address to whomever:  "I will be there / I swear / be there / swear," but this oath can never fully erase another repeated phrase in the song:  "my body is undone" and "everything changes / everything changes."  I will be there.  Where?  There.  Where?  There.  And each time:  there.  I swear. 

It is a sworn statement.  He will be there.

And of course he's there.  He's on Vimeo and YouTube and elsewhere, above all elsewhere.  It's that sound that we hear, because that sound is our sound, the sound of air that is always about to transpire or expire. 

My point now has nothing to do with the way Jason Noble died so young (40), but really only has to do with that sound.  When is the sound?  When does the sound take place?  Here?  There?  But also, if there's a there, there must also be a where:  where then?  There.  Where?  There.  And we can add:  I swear.  I swear that that sound is not here.

Here (it's right there -- click it):  Rodan, "Everyday World of Bodies"

Or... the way the lines fragment at the end, dropping the subject ("I"), thus turning the performative statement (I swear) into a demand:  "Be there!  Swear!"  Like the ghost in Hamlet, enjoining Hamlet Jr. to exact vengeance:  "Swear!"  It's a demand, from the addressor, that the addressee swear with the addressor:  swear with me!  And together the sworn statement becomes a conjuring (a swearing-together).  A conspiracy of sorts (a conjura or conjure, a conspiracy that is formed by swearing together), yes, but not a conspiracy of silence or disappearance, but rather a conspiracy to appear, to be there, a conspiracy that conjures up the very appearance of those who have sworn together.  How to respond to such a demand?  How to swear before a ghost, not a ghost that you have conjured up, but rather a ghost who conjures you, who demands that you appear, that you be there?  "This is our sound."

[Photo above via http://killingtechnology.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/rodan/]