Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Short Story: Hearlumination


It’s the same song, the Ohrwurm of a hundred bored days and every sleepless night. Danced to it at discos, set it as your ringtone, he played it at his wedding and she put it on every compilation tape and mix CD she made for the best part of five years. Fell in and out of love to it, with it.

Every strained lyric, every compressed handclap, every plosive breath and derivative lead guitar riff, they’re all so familiar, too familiar. I contend: familiarity breeds nostalgia and apathy. Viscerality and vitality is replaced by comfort and conditioning, it’s all learned reactions and automatic programmed emotions.

But: on different speakers, different headphones, in someone’s car, you hear, she hears a backing vocal, a bass-line, a phased melody, pushed to the forefront by bad wiring, poor equalisation, and suspect speaker placement.

It is a new calling sound amongst time-wearied notes of remembrance and recognition. It is a long-lost half-sibling, an accidental chance body of happenstance that inspects and dissects everything that was once so beloved.  It's hearlumination. It's hearluminating. And it sings and it shines and it makes you so very happy and in love all over again.


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Neologism and story inspired by the following tweet:
Thanks Mic.


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