On the Line
That is a quote from an 11-year-old, named Aissam Dam, who was born deaf and gained hearing late last year as the first person to “get gene therapy in the United States for congenital deafness.” (gift link). “The studies, researchers said, mark a new frontier for gene therapy which, until now, had steered clear of hearing loss.”
. . .
"She pauses, and reaches for the glass of water by her side. Meanwhile, London tests the window frames one by one; rattles the glass, checking for entry points. But London, for the moment, is staying outside. While Alison sips, raindrops pebble the windows, an invisible benediction because the blinds have been pulled down. But the sound paints the picture nonetheless: a relentless battery, as if Monochrome were under siege, and down to its last supplies."That is from Mick Herron’s latest novel, The Secret Hours, which isn’t, per se, part of his ongoing Slow Horses contemporary spy series (also an Apple TV series, which I haven’t managed to really get into, despite my having read all the books — in fact, every book he’s written), but does take place in the same world, with many overlapping characters. (Alison is a spy being interrogated about activity in Berlin decades earlier, around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Monochrome is the name of the intelligence forensic project under the auspices of which the interview is taking place.) I’d argue this is maybe the best starting point for readers who are new to him, though of course the various revelations will mean more to those who are familiar with his vast ensemble of colorful — and tellingly colorless — spies. And as if that above paragraph doesn’t do a good enough job of setting the scene, the very next paragraph opens with a line that draws the reader right back into the room, as it does Alison: “There is a faint click as glass meets tabletop again.”
. . .
"Despite the rhetoric of immersion, I think that surround sound systems are never about 'self loss' (immersion) but rather the 'lost self' (the impossible maze); the methodology sends the listener on an endlessly frustrated search for a 'sweet spot, as they continually fail to position themselves in response to sonic materials that never convincingly fit into place."That is musician Mark Fell in his book Structure and Synthesis: The Anatomy of Practice (2022). I interviewed Fell live (via Zoom) on stage as part of the Algorithmic Art Assembly back in March, the year of its publication. I had only a brief bit of time to absorb the book in advance of the event, so I’ve been reading it more concertedly this month, a heady start to this still new year.
