Hallock Hill

Keith Fullerton Whitman, excerpt from split LP with Mike Shiflet (Amethyst Sunset, 2010)

Her eyes looked like woodsmoke. Shoeless. A waving shock of hair uncontrived and yet purposeful and in her the sounds of as many trees and waves as I could hold in my head. Woodsmoke eyes. Alighted. Dark ombre of twisting color ribboned upwards, as she looked upwards, away from me I must admit and towards a lost thought. I could only imagine.

When I took her hand and she curled her fingers round mine I was instantly absent minded and my own eyes surely wilted. Nonsense. Or at least nonsensical. We both quickly smiled. We were standing in a hot puddle behind the cemetery where the teachers couldn’t find us. Or at least, wouldn’t.

I can remember the way the sun looked that day and the monument of humidity that was around us. Questions about dinner time and what we would eat and who we would sit with and were we going to go to the library and thank god there’s only two more weeks of school and then what. God it was hot and filled with an unbinding confusion.

Ultimately the sand in the base of that puddle, which was really a shallow tributary of a stream behind the school, got to us and we realized we had to leave. Walk back down the hill to the buildings and landscaping and curbs and sidewalks and fences.

We met sitting in a windowless room reading short stories. Her roommate told me to love her in a darkroom. She told me in a darkroom.

That day ended and ended, I’m not sure now. Who can expect me to know which day was the one I’ve been thinking about? Or you’ve been thinking about? All these sounds and silences, wrapped in tissues of time and guarded by wrinkled memories of her, each other, one’s self.

(Limited LP release. Find it directly from Amethyst Sunset or Mike Shiflet.)

Side 1: Keith Fullerton Whitman: live analog synthesizer
Side 2: Mike Shiflet: live guitar and oscillator

The above was written as I listened to Whitman’s piece for the first time.  The first sentence was generated when I first saw the cover.