Hallock Hill

The Caretaker, “False Memory Syndrome,” Persistent Repetition of Phrases (History Always Favours the Winners, 2010 reissue, originally released by Install, 2008)

I dip my toe into the stream and in that moment when the water parts and diverts round my skin I hear a distant echo of the past. I feel it too, in the coolness of the water, and see a reflection of the tree behind me, warped by the undulations of the water and the complicated visual field of the rocks at riverbed.

Finding it difficult to merely experience the moment, with thoughts creating to-do lists and recalling doings forgotten, I stare intently at just the tip of my toe, now submerged. I take out a leaf I’d put in my pocket earlier and toss it into the rushing water. Gone. It is a past thought now gone, I can hear it float away.

My sons are downstream in the swimming hole. I am above the light run of rapids, shallow water defined by larger rocks that form the orchestra of this place. Their intermittent hollers percuss the air, piping exclamations of life within the endless flow of time that rolls over my toe, quickly, and past them, slowly. It is the same river, but no drop of it the same as any other.

I try and imagine imaginary origins of words, place names. The while my toe punctures the surface of the water. Alive. My grandparents are dead. I can hear them laughing at my sons. My great aunt is standing across the river with a drink in her hand and she’s asking them if the water is cold. And they answer her. Nothing is cold.

This all happens in the wink of an eye, an eye I am not sure is mine.

(A new approach to reacting to music, perhaps.)