Sound inside

The Sound Inside 8/23/19 35
be growing out of these weakened bodies, not feeding anything corrective
into them.
Before my shower curtain is pulled for privacy I can see that I’m sitting
beside a woman who is so frail and weak I have to resist the absurd impulse
to reach over and break her arm. Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is sagging
open. She wears state-of-the-art, noise-canceling headphones. She’s in agony.
I get up and leave.
*
BELLA(to AUDIENCE)
Following the November recess I convince the academic Dean that I feel well
enough to return to class where my students regale me with stories of the
substitute professor’s bizarre habit of adjusting his testicles while
incessantly pacing the room.
I lead a twenty-minute writing exercise whose only rule is that your pencil
must never stop moving, even if language breaks down into illegible
hieroglyphics. The purpose is to tap into your unconscious and free up the
velocity of thought. I ask the class to meditate on the idea of doing something
terrible – the worst thing they can imagine: a rape, a murder, setting fire to a
family home, whathaveyou – and let the writing spring from this.
I also participate in the exercise, and minutes later I find myself writing the
same phrase over and over:
Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the sound
inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the
sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to
the sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen to the sound inside. Listen
to the sound inside.
I fill almost an entire legal pad.
The same five words.
I have no idea what it means.
At the end of class, Christopher Dunn approaches me.
“Hey,” he says.