Some people find it terrifying to cover their ears with their hands and listen. What do you hear? I think I hear interstellar space without any waves. It’s mostly the sound of a dark continuing space. If it (if I) were a painting, it would (I would) be a Rothko in shades of greys and blacks. The small sound of any accidental flexure of my ears is magnified, and can be mistaken for a stray pulse beat. You shouldn’t be able to hear your pulse there. The threshold of sound of blood moving is supposed to be too low. I feel terrible for the ones with tinnitus. When doctors can’t fix you, they push you towards this or that “acceptance therapy.” Medicine quickly gives way to meditation as rain becomes snow. Imagine suddenly being filled with a ringing through which the world must now come. But didn’t they say Muhammad sat in a cave and heard verses from an Archangel? I remember someone telling me it was like the chiming of a bell in his ears. Sometimes when I listen to Steve Reich or Brian Eno’s “Thursday Afternoon,” I start to hallucinate sounds that aren’t “really there.” In the latter work, an entire garden with rain unfolds sometimes. Birds and rain fill the room until I feel I have left the house and I am hearing actual time nature. Places can haunt language and sound. We can be forgiven for being confused whether we are inside these things or they are inside us. It is the same with love relationships.

Brian Eno’s notes on Thursday Afternoon