Blind Text

Hedge protection, lights off.

• (Acoustic sheet lightning): Footsteps on gravel, the clanging of keys, seagulls screaming.
• A door opens, far off a car tire explodes, then a chorus of horns. Rest. Laundry flapping in the wind.
• Dim babble of voices, volume changing with the music that keeps missing the driving beat. Children practice the alphabet as a choir.
• The sounds grow dimmer, possibly due to an unstable recording device. Suddenly a female voice in the foreground, seductive: “Well, did you have fun?”
• Male voice, surprised by the question: “But ... I only just ...”(In the background, music and voices, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter. Slamming doors, chattering teeth.)
• Third voice (male), passing, in a knowing, hypnotic tone: “But we all are, aren’t we?”
• Female voice, on being touched pleasantly: “Mmmmmmmm...” Laughter close by. Somewhere the hissing of a dragon. Maybe at a funfair.
• Male voice, in a questioning tone: “Are all bags full of sand?”
• Babble of voices and music getting louder, crumbling debris on the slope. The rhythm becomes the propeller sound of a helicopter. In the background, a machine-generated voice in distress: “Come here! Come here!” Hasty turning of pages.
• The helicopter flies away, the vibration of the rotor disappears slowly behind the jungle noises, then raindrops, parrot screams, echo in slow motion, etc.
• New male voice, decisively: “Although we from Metafinanz don’t pay your electricity bill, we can ensure that for once you wake up where you want to wake up! Just ignore your appointments! We are a strong team, full of ener ...” Various channels crackle, frogs begin their nightly song, canon. Silence (perhaps already the end?), expectation.

(After a long period of forgetting: between knocking sounds on hollow walls, clinking glasses can be heard, behind that, fireworks and singing whales, probably from a TV. Hectic breathing by a waitress, illogical orders, finally a murmur from which the female voice from the beginning emerges once again: “Well, do you recognize me?”)

Halcyon Days, Cologne 2013, p. 394