Soundless sound

I’m in a dark cellar, I’ve just arrived here from work. In my livingroom there’s no-one at first, and I walk over to a table where I find my digital camera. I decide to take a snapshot of myself, as this was my first day at a new job. I take the photo, trying to smile bravely but knowing that I fail miserably. I turn the camera around to look at the picture, but it’s not there. Instead, someone has put a lot of effort into making some sort of stop-motion animation of some Lego characters, climbing ropes and running around. It’s all done very nicely and professionally, and I am able to skip through the images and look at them as a film. I can’t understand how all those images could fit on my memory card, but I’m still impressed.

My brother appears. With him he’s got his four kids. They are smiling and dancing. My brother is quite cheery too. He reminds me of the deal I made with Beck, the artist; to do a video for one of his newest songs. He wanted animated Lego characters. Suddenly I remember it all. I look at the images again, and now I can see that some of the Lego characters are not Lego - it’s my brothers’ kids doing all the climbing and stuff, but it’s still done using stop-motion. I’m very impressed.

Now, out from nowhere, the singer from The Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne, appear, and tells me I’m late for my archery class. I follow him into a room on the side, where walls, floor and ceiling are painted in such a way as to give the illusion that we’re outside. The illusion isn’t great. On one wall there’s a giant screen. Mr. Coyne turns it on, hands me a big, heavy bow, and tells me to have a go.

On screen there’s a big, round, digital ‘bullseye’ target. I spend some time trying to understand how this all works. There are no arrows, and there’s small H.U.D. screen instead of a sight. The whole thing works like a computer game. I try shooting away a few arrows, and soon I realise that the sight is a bit off, so I have to adjust it by pressing some buttons on the bow labelled ‘+’ and ‘-’. The arrows I’ve shot are represented by dots on the target. Now I really get the hang of it, and all my arrows hit bullseye. My points increase and Mr. Coyne claps his hands, saying he’s really impressed. I tell him he should take a look at the video we’ve made, so we go back to the livingroom.

I show him the video on the camera. My brother and the kids are standing around too. Another guy from the band appears. After we’ve watched it, Mr. Coyne gets really excited and says he’ll buy it, and that we shouldn’t give a shit about Beck. I smile and I like the idea. Mr. Coyne also ask me if I can do him a favor; he wants me to record the sound from the lamp in my livingroom. He describes the way to do it:

«Put a mic on the lamp, plug the signal into an amp, turn up the bass and the volume on the amp, and then put another mic on the amp». This is the sound he wants. «The lamp makes an unique bass sound,» he says, «it’s just that we can’t hear it». He then tells me that The Beatles were the first ones to use this technique, and years later, Prince copied it and used it in the song ‘When Doves Cry’ - and the whole thing makes perfect sense to me, because that particular Prince-song has no bassline, and now I understand that this is because it can’t be heard. This makes me really excited; me working for The Flaming Lips and all, the possibilities are endless, so…

I wake up.