The Echo Chamber

by Luke Williams

  23 Sept

  On the bus. Can’t take in much. Way too twitchy, too horny … feeling pretty high from last night, and then there’s this local kind of high I’ve got, right between the legs … Oh Mama! We opened last night. Saw some of the show from the wings but mostly heard it from backstage. Wardrobe duties. D’d rush in, shrug into whatever alien kimono we held out for him, then rush out. A couple of times he got the chance to smoke a fag, too hyped to sit, leaning back instead against the dressing table with one leg folded under him like a long white locust. But Evie. Evie was out there in the audience. I caught the end from the wings, saw the guys take their applause like soldiers home from battle, sweaty and victorious, bloodied almost in the lights, the rest of us standing around like handmaidens. When they came off I caught a look in D’s eyes that made me flinch. The emptiness you get. Hung around backstage as long as I could, waiting for E. She never showed. Went with the others to the aftershow party. I’m getting drunk fast on the champagne and the mood, stumbling around looking for her. Then I spot her. She’s under the piano. Sitting cross-legged, palms on knees guru-style. She smiles up at me then takes tissue paper out of her ears. She’s had it in most of the night. The gig was too loud. But not at first: she dug the idea of this whole alter ego thing, the band stepping out on stage as characters. But then at its peak, during the anthem, staring in wonder at this beautiful alien come to Earth to save the kids with rock ’n’ roll, she catches the eye of a woman in the front row who gave her such a look – ‘she could see I was believing a lie and despised me for it’ – and that was when she had torn up some tissue paper and stuffed it into her ears –

  Scribus interruptus. Evie read the first line over my shoulder. Gave me a kiss that nearly made me come, then took matters into her own … fingers. Slipped them into my jeans and into me and fingered me right there under cover of my denim jacket. Wow. Wow. Wow.

  24 Sept

  Another hotel. E asleep, hair the colour of damp sand. Our things less ours with each new room we move to. On the cabinet between our beds (but we only sleep in one), E’s beaded headband has the look of an object left behind by someone else. Is this true of people too? No. In an unfamiliar room, crammed together in a single bed, we’re more each other’s than ever. No sign of the night terrors. She’s my amulet.

  Last night, in bed, after a languorous fuck, stretching our limbs most extravagantly (the luxury of a bed!), I told E about Elvis, since we are in Memphis. She’d only just about heard of him. Such a square! So I held her tenderly in my arms and sang ‘Love Me Tender’. Then I taught her the words. We sang it together, and she recorded it. Like most people with terrible voices, she sings with great enthusiasm.

  25 Sept

  Travelling to New York. Night. Lying in Evie’s lap, eyes closed, a sleep that itself feels in transit, Evie stroking my hair, me vaguely aware of E and Zed, the make-up artist, talking in low voices over me. Far away and in my head as voices sound when you’re half asleep. E telling Zed about her project. About how, in Memphis, she’d gone to a barber’s to record the sound of a wet shave, the stropping of razor on leather, the slapping-on of foam, the razor rasping skin. Then she’d recorded the sound of the barber ringing up payment in his old-fashioned cash register. That’s when she realized that any sound she chose to record would, at the point of her hearing it, become in some way extinct: she would never again hear the sounds she was hearing right there, right then, in that way.

  Evie gently shakes me awake, into that close, womb-like dark that settles over you when you’re driving at night. Look! she says, pointing at the moon. Huge, champagne-coloured, low in the sky. You could reach out and touch it and as I think that, she puts her fingers to the glass. Makes me glad and sad at once to think we’ve reached a point of remembering when she says, Reminds me of the night we drove to Easdale.

  28 Sept, New York

  They got me doing the statue thing out front for all the freaks coming in. Evie a no-show. Drinking after. Went to sit on what I thought was a chair but turned out to be a cunning arrangement of shadows – a strong grip on my wrist. I was caught in time. Zed. A gymnast’s body and the kind of rolling bow-legged walk of a cowboy. Zed asked about me being painted up like a mime, and I told her my story. She gave me some shit – ‘This’ll make you feel like you’re on stage.’ We spent the whole night talking. Me mostly, about Evie. Her old-fashioned face and tissue paper in her ears and the recording project and the din of herself. Zed told me about anechoic chambers – dead rooms – where all sound is absorbed and all you hear is the blood in your head.

  – Evie has just come in and jumped into bed all excited about having recorded some girls singing skipping rhymes in a part of town we were told to stay away from but Evie, she’s an angel who walks unthinking of the harm that melts to let her pass. They just dig her here. Didn’t mention the anechoic chamber.

  29 Sept

  Monster America! Riding the back of it. An endless spine of road that rolls through rocks and crags and mountains, dark banks of trees as far as forever. The wide, blue jeans sky. We flash by gas stations, small towns, low-roofed barns. We glimpse horses, wind ruffling the pastures and making warm pelts of them. Now and then goods trains run alongside. Different from English trains – more resolved with their long blunt noses. Bull-headed. Evie loves the sound of their horns blaring.

  Two hours from Washington we get out at a truck stop and order pancakes. Evie chats to a big-shouldered man on his way to a cattle auction. Asks if she can record him. They go outside into the parking lot. I see her point up at the sky. A single cloud. Can’t hear but I can tell. Auction that, she’s saying. He fixes his eyes on the cloud. Inhales deeply. Launches into a spiel without stopping. A controlled kind of babbling. He looks possessed, eyes rolled up at the sky like that. Evie stands amazed, holding out her mic. He’s finished. For a moment, Evie’s static with shock, then she launches into gestures of amazement.

  She played it to us now on the bus. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. A foreign language. A kind of yodelling. Like the same two strings on a banjo twanged again and again, a rhythm to his babble, and remembering how he looked possessed, I think of speaking in tongues. And then it occurs to me. What Evie is doing with her project. She is divorcing sound from gesture. Opposite to me.

  3 Oct (I think)

  New York again. Shitty hotel in xx. Our room looks out on to a blackened wall. 5 a.m. and I’ve been lying here since I got in, an hour ago, staring at that wall. Evie not back yet from wherever she went tonight: said she’d go out and record. I had no gig tonight but she didn’t ask me to come. Went out nightclubbing with Zed. Quite a scene here. Everyone a star but me a black one, a collapsed one. Invisible somehow. Afterwards, walking back to the hotel, everything still leaking neon in the early hours of the morning, I had that feeling you get on tour sometimes, of forgetting where you are, your centre. I feel very far away. But from what?

  Evie just in. Couldn’t stop talking, then crashed. She rode the subway. She met a group of young guys. They were going to paint the subway trains – graffiti artists. They took her to an underground yard where the trains are parked when they stop running for the night. They made a strange noise, Evie says, like a mechanical panting, a melancholy, musical clanking, the heat of their bodies cooling. She recorded that and the sound of the boys climbing the trains, calling out to one another, the rattle and spray of their cans, the hiss of the paint on hot metal.

  That faraway feeling has not gone even with Evie near, sleeping. A mime is used to being silent. But not invisible. Not backstage. Writing helps.

  11 Oct, Kansas City

  Coming down with something like the Faulty. After last night’s gig – 11,000-seater stadium and only 180 people show up – they got me out front. Zed makes me up to look like D in character, lightning-slash cheekbones, refrigerated lips, hair cut and dyed burned orange and spiked like his. Stand outside all day, a statue of him, to draw in the kids. And they come. And they all look lik
e me, or rather, me dressed as him, and not really him, but him on stage. Me an idol of their idol. I watch the show. The kids, all dressed like him, screaming at him. Him smiling back. I get scared. Leave. Evie wasn’t back. When she came in early this morning – out recording, an anti-war rally – she found me with my head over the sink, streaks of what looked like ink running into the plughole. ‘Sorcière’, it says on the bottle.

  Pasted underneath this entry, without comment, is the following paragraph, carefully cut out from the page of a book.

  You see, Oz is a great Wizard, and can take on any form he wishes. So that some say he looks like a bird; and some say he looks like an elephant; and some say he looks like a cat. To others he appears as a beautiful fairy, or a brownie, or in any other form that pleases him. But who the real Oz is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell.

  26 Oct, San Francisco

  We got to LA and I freaked out. I don’t know where I am I don’t where I am I don’t know where I am. Evie runs in to borrow a map from Jerry-The-Driver. Spreads it out for me. This is where we are, my heart, this is where we are. But so folded over, so used, that where she’s pointing there’s nothing but a deep crease and I bellow in fear.

  We went on ahead, to San Francisco, to a b’n’b in an odd part of town with ice-cream coloured houses and steep, winding lanes. Beautiful girls and boys wandering the streets hand-in-hand. Girls with girls, boys with boys. We never felt so free. I write this lying here in bed with E, watching the light from that island prison sweep our walls, in counterpoint to Evie’s stroking of my thigh.

  27 Oct, San Francisco

  Yesterday. We’re given the most beautiful gift. Evie and I are passing a florist’s. The owner comes out, a flower painted on his face, presents Evie with a bunch of tropical-looking flowers. She charms them, these Americans. I only merit a glance. This glance, taking in my looks, looks no further. But with Evie they look and look. They realize she doesn’t know what she is, and this intrigues them. These Americans, so open, confident of what they are, find people like her a puzzle, those who are a mystery to themselves and are unaware of it. She’s that peculiarly English thing, to them: an eccentric. It’s in her face. Me, I’m invisible.

  We chat with the florist. Evie tells him about her recording. He’s fascinated. And what about sounds you wouldn’t normally hear? The sound, he says, touching the flowers, of these birds of paradise singing? Oh, if I could hear sounds like that! And the florist says, You will. He gives us each a tab, and, Alice-like, we swallow.

  We talked for a while until, from the corner of my eye, I saw the birds of paradise began to twitch. To preen, poised. Poisonous. Possessed. In their burned orange crests I saw D’s hair. The birds of paradise began to sing. His song. The florist gave us acid, Evie! Stick out your tongue and say Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh … Haaaaaaaaaaaaah, Evie! What fun we had! We thanked the florist and left him smiling, by his singing flowers. We wandered the streets till we reached the water. Water running in different directions, we stood staring, looking at this rush of water, in such a rush, where is it rushing to? we wondered. And then we see him. The dog. A ginger dog, lost. Tail hovering (how are you feeling? Oh so-so). You say, How do you know it’s lost, and I say, Cos it’s alone: dogs on their own are always lost. But what about cats? Cats are different, I said. But why? and I said, Because.

  The dog nosed around our legs, sniffed our feet. We could keep it, maybe, you squat down, throw your arms around his neck, kiss his flat, greasy head. No, I feel deep in his bristly ruff for a collar. Look. A bronze disk. ‘Brumby’. That’s his name. He lives at this address. He must have been gone from home a while. He’s lost weight: look how loose his collar is. Brumby lifts his eyes from the pavement, they shift from me to you. His brown eyes have an orange glow. Like amber. No like yours, you say. Then, Who’s Amber?

  Brumby licked the pavement. Do you think he’s hungry? Yeah, probably, But we don’t have any money. We should just get him back to his home and then he can eat. Before I realize what you’re doing you run up to a man in the street. You point to Brumby and look at the man, who digs in his pocket and hands you change. Then you run into a shop and run up to me, ripping the wrapper off a Hershey Bar. Brumby swipes his bit off the palm of your hand with his bacon rasher tongue then looks hopeful while we eat ours. We have trouble. This chunk of Hershey Bar is getting BIGGER in my mouth you want to say, but I can’t hear you cos the chunk of Hershey Bar is too big in your mouth and all I hear is grwmmmmgnnn and I say, Same here but all you hear is grwmmmmgnnn. You hold out sticky hands to Brumby saying, All gone, all gone. So Brumby licks your fingers and you melt. Try it, you tell me, Let him lick your fingers. We stand there a while, letting Brumby lick our fingers. It feels like he’s sculpting us with his tongue, like you do ice-cream in a cone. I am an ice-cream statue you say, Let me stand very still until I melt away. But the idea of statues freaks me out right now, Let’s take him back, I say. Let’s claim the reward. Will there be a reward? Oh yes, a big reward, he is a rare and valuable breed, and we snigger, poor Brumby looking up, trying to get the joke. We walk along the water, Brumby trotting at our heels or stopping to bury his nose into god knows what or just standing dead at the waterside looking deep into it. Sour, green. Can you taste that water? Yes, gooseberries. We screw our faces with the tartness. Brumby, what are you staring at? I drag him back by the collar. Fish, you say. There’s no fish in there. Later, we walk down an avenue of tall slim trees with smooth white bark and leaves that snap in the wind. Large leaves, red, white and blue

  The entry is incomplete, and there follows several pages with doodles of flowers, giant tropical flowers that often look like birds.

  Dania, Atlanta, Nashville

  In Dania, or Atlanta, or Nashville, we saw a bus close its doors in the face of a young black girl. Plaits, yellow ribbons, Sunday shoes. She ran a good way down the road, shouting. Evie wanted to get out and record her.

  In Dania, or Atlanta, or Nashville, I was spat on by a middle-aged black woman who walked past me and Evie. We were not holding hands.

  In Dania, or Atlanta, or Nashville, I picked up a young white boy who was hanging out at the stage door, hoping to see D. He was dressed like D. I took him round the corner and fucked him. Later, in the washroom of a bar, I saw that some of his make-up had come off against my cheek. That same night, in that same bar, in that same city, I got punched by a cowboy.

  Before that, long days and short nights in the desert. Crickets, fire, the skitter of lizards. And in the distance, coyotes. Evie records them all. Nothing of me on the tapes. I barely speak. Deserts have a silencing effect.

  22 November, New Orleans

  Swamp fever. Something weirdly familiar about this city. Feels rotten, tropical. Spoiled. It’s in the air. Easdale! The air draws life from you. I wander like a zombie down antique streets rich with stink. People more variously coloured here. Last night I saw a man stabbed. Wandered out late to buy some cigarettes from a shack. Two winos are pushing and shoving one another, both of them grasping a bottle in a brown paper bag. They seem evenly matched in weight and strength – the pushing and shoving metronomical but then one of the men takes an extra step back – staggers, in fact – and as he does I see a dark spray of blood shoot from his neck in an arc like water from the mouth of an ornamental cherub. I run back to the hotel room. Evie out recording. Evie always out fucking recording.

  23 Nov

  She came in early this morning. Slept a couple of hours and crept out again. I did not get the chance to tell her about the stabbing. And so it lives in my head and somehow stains my thoughts, the way a drop of ink can tint a glass of water. Sorcière.

  The following entries do not have dates, just place names, if anything.

  X cities in X days and X nights of the terrors. Not sure if I am awake or asleep or if what I see I have seen before. All these cities, these small towns we pass through, this stuff that unspools outside our windows, this scenery – the furze and the pine and t
he rocks and the people look painted in.

  When she’s lying next to me, or when we fuck, she’s elsewhere, listening to her recordings. I’ve lost the will. Every city we get to she wants to be alone. With that tape recorder. I hear better when you’re not with me. Closest times are on the bus. There’s nowhere else for her to go. Nowhere else for her head to fall when she sleeps, except on my shoulder.

  E mummifies herself in tape. Splitting sound from gesture. Me from her. Every time I speak all she hears is a ringing. She winces. Stops listening.

  Philadelphia

  He looked like a Mormon but I met him in a bar. Weirdly lit. Him, I mean. That’s what they’re like, the Mormons I’ve seen. He worked for the National Association for Standards and Testing. We decide the standards, he said and when I asked, For what?, he said, Everything. We talked about testing. He told me about the extreme conditions under which things had to be tested. He mentioned sound.

  I promised him a fuck with us if he’d do it. I was asking a lot, I knew. A high state of security exists around such places. I myself in a high state of insecurity. In a room where she’d hear no sound but herself, what else could she do but turn to me?

  I asked about her plans. Out recording, she said. Told her she should forget about recording for today. Said I wanted to conduct an experiment on her. An experiment in sound. In listening. She smiled. A proper smile. First time in weeks. She let me blindfold her. And here was Evie. Evie who fell in love with me. Needing me to guide her.