Sound

To Norbert Valath To render the ocean one needs a whole year with Zoom in freezing fingers on a quarter-mile of coast. Sound is the one true vocabulary of nature and not the peacock-palette painters swear he uses for his best stuff, for his daily disposable frescoes. To render the ocean one needs a whole year on the quayside tracking the tide’s increasing stature, its drones and climaxes, the diminuendo when it shows sound is the one true vocabulary of nature. Nature plays bass clarinet in a Barcelona pop-up theatre. In a polo neck he solos the ocean. He tongues, he blows to render the ocean. One needs a whole year or centuries to capture even its least-most feature: like the boat-cove’s lapping, backwashed contraflows. Sound is the one true vocabulary of Nature, who’s lost in his MacBook, applying filter after filter to this day-long rock-pool’s jazz, its stadium of echoes. To render its ocean one needs a whole year: sound is the one true vocabulary of nature.