Pocket Dispatch from “Flying to America” by Marco Parisi
Was the soft pounding sound coming from the music, or the apartment above? Or was it inside my head? It was gentle enough, not unpleasant, but persistent and mysterious. My suspicion aroused, I strained obsessively to hear it.
The strings washed over the pounding sound, and over me. They could have been acoustic or synthetic. The slid up and down in a bath of reverb, making small waves, evoking an emotional response that surprised me. It was sad—I realized I was mourning something—but I welcomed it as the first strong feeling I’d had in days.
I closed my eyes and imagined the landscape this music evoked. I imagined the environment that inspired it, and the artist in the space where he created it. The title describes an international flight, and the artwork looks like a view of clouds from above, or maybe a view of sand in soft focus, rippled by yesterday’s high tide.
These images gave way to a montage of my own memories, real and imagined, of making art. Strong emotions giving way to dramatic expression. I remember it in colors and slices of moments, silenced and flitting by so quickly that some are indecipherable.
My life had recently stopped feeling like my own; my memory no longer autobiographical.