Crowd, Moved

story ten · figures 28–30

The story →

CROWD, MOVED · ONE DAY OF BOOKINGS — five jobs, one unit, one man who hears none of it · and the invoice each one produces CROWD, MOVED · ONE DAY OF BOOKINGS five jobs, one unit, one man who hears none of it · and the invoice each one produces MORNING the arcade, nine o’clock a wedding · light through the girders in long paid stripes itemized NOON the school hall the songs the syllabus licenses · one boy at the back refuses itemized AFTERNOON the fish market a wake · new business · the ice swept into the gutters itemized EVENING the Tank, off-night a guest in a room that plays itself · and once, the slow one itemized · four minutes filed DAWN the square by the exchange no stage · a tempo just under a heartbeat at rest ONE LINE: crowd, moved FOUR BOOKINGS ARE PRICED BY WHAT THE UNIT PLAYED. THE FIFTH IS PRICED BY WHAT THE CROWD DID. The crowd does not disperse. The crowd walks — the way water finds a drain, calmly, all at once, in the direction the tempo leans. In twenty minutes the square is empty and swept-feeling. THE WEDDING GETS AN ITEMIZED BILL. THE DISPERSAL GETS A NOUN AND A VERB.
28 · Crowd, Moved
CROWD, MOVED · WHAT EACH PARTY HEARS — a story about music in which the two people who matter most are deaf to it, by choice and by design CROWD, MOVED · WHAT EACH PARTY HEARS a story about music in which the two people who matter most are deaf to it, by choice and by design THE UNIT everything · it reads the room and answers it lowers everything half a step for one boy with folded arms THE CROWD the tempo, and not the tune they do not know they are walking to it THE HANDLER NOTHING · wax stoppers, every booking he watches the shoes THE READER IN THE CORNER four minutes it cannot place files them · no license, no catalogue, no title THE CITY one line on an invoice crowd, moved THE HANDLER PUTS THE STOPPERS IN. THE JOB IS LIFTING, NOT LISTENING. At dawn he takes them out and the city comes back into his ears: gulls, shutters, the funicular starting its first climb up a hill the case has never been allowed on — weight limits. He has carried that weight up the stair street instead, for years. HE WHEELS THE UNIT HOME HUMMING. SIX STEPS DOWN. HE HAS NEVER HEARD IT. HIS FEET HAVE.
29 · Crowd, Moved
CROWD, MOVED · THE SIX STEPS DOWN — one tune, played once between the licensed selections · on no license, in no catalogue, answering to no title CROWD, MOVED · THE SIX STEPS DOWN one tune, played once between the licensed selections · on no license, in no catalogue, answering to no title the slow one · six steps down what it is not not licensed · not catalogued · not titled · not billed what the room does the young stop trying to be moving, and are simply moved what the reader does files four minutes it cannot place where it turns up again in a hall of cabinets, on the fourteenth, played from a crate and again humming, at dawn, from a man who has never heard it THE ONLY THING IN THIS DAY THAT NOBODY OWNS IS THE ONLY THING ANYBODY REMEMBERS. It travels the way the book says memory travels here — in a body, unpaid, and slightly wrong. His feet have it. That is the whole of its archive. SIX STEPS DOWN, AND NOT ONE OF THEM IS ON A SYSTEM.
30 · Crowd, Moved

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