fufufufufu

The bat laughs. Half-joke, full throat, a crass cheer, abruptly touchy, but I’m told it sounds like lucky. Funny. Chinese was the first language I remember being laughed at. They say it’s not what you say, but how you say it; I think my aunts would agree. Wrong intonation, slight accent, my muttering Mandarin slowly sounding silent, it wasn’t long before I was too embarrassed to keep trying.

My mom can’t quite make me out. She says I mumble too much, my voice is too low, it’s hiding somewhere beneath the floor. I remember coming home after I came out, she said you talk so quietly now. You can’t dress the voice, it’s untouched by estrogen, surgery only goes so far; you have to crowdfund in cringe, embarrassment, and humiliation to start. If your voice is too high, they don’t take you seriously, if your voice is even higher, they won’t hear you at all. The worst of men say women should be seen and not heard, but it’s true I pass pretty well, when I close the door to my words.

I’ve learned that things become things when they sound sort of similar. A fish sounds like abundance, and so it becomes. A gourd sounds like good fortune, so it will be. An apple sounds like peace, but four sound like death, so it is, so they are. So let’s try to hear our world a little bit differently. Can it sound sort of similar to the reverberations of rebirth? Can it sound like earth turning? Can it sound like hearth warming? The first sounds ever recorded were carved into wax, easy to melt, and start from scratch.

Last Spring, I visited the bats in Bracken, where over 15 million call home. They go out every evening to eat, chattering and laughing in flight; imagine a community, as large as New York City, playing their entire lives by ear. Maybe an echo chamber isn’t so bad, when we’re all just trying to survive. Growing up, in the evenings around dusk after dinner, my family often goes for a walk. Sometimes we’d eat popsicles and read the jokes on the sticks, treating them more like riddles to be solved. Maybe this makes me more prepared for these times, I’m practiced in finding my way through bad jokes, threading multiple meanings, ambiguity, and uncertainty feel like the streets around home.

Carson writes, “every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. . . . a piece of inside projected to the outside.” You want to hear your desires aloud. You want to hear that your desire is allowed. I practice speaking mostly with myself, I’m trying to locate my echoes. Sometimes a wish is just a question repeated. Find me someone who asks the same way I do, answers are not necessarily needed. Let’s get lost on purpose and hide in the pitch. We’ll shout our fears in the dark, and press our ear to the door, listening for anyone who calls back. Too low or too high, I’m here, I hear you, in the caves or the clouds, we’ll find a frequency of our own. I’ll be listening closely.

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Curatorial Text: https://www.c-cap.org/fufufufu...

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