After the Needle

After the Needle

There is a sound made in the space between the needle lifting and the automatic retraction click of the tone arm; a pause where the air is filled with the echoed knowledge of the music that just was.  The record still spinning, the silence of objects watching the room. The silence of ghosts holding their breath. 

This subtlety, it does not exist in the binary of digital.  In my earliest youth these moments were filled with reflection, dreams and unknown futures.  As if waiting for my life.  Later, a grown man, I would seek this same feeling in the sounds of my birds falling asleep in their cages. I lay in the room listening to our shared limited freedom and the need for relaxation.

It’s been years since I’ve heard and felt these. Their motions like this place of yours, filled with the very old, the history, and the new.  Objects of countries and families; sadness and joy; pride, hope and loss. This blanket from Iceland.  Or an old sickle on the wall, hanging above the trunk of an unremembered GSC Surveyor.  Weaving a tapestry of wool, of animals; of rocks, old magic, metal and wood.  Stilling the air, their fabric holding the sounds in the spaces after the needle, of the floor, this room, and You.

-       December 14, 2014

© J. Popowich