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Song 5 | Aug 07 2003

I could see the musicians as they played. They were in a room, perhaps at different times, wearing headphones. A series of images floated by, extreme close-ups: the drummer’s right wrist, a hand moving over keys, a guitar pick held between thumb and forefinger, the muscles in the neck of the man singing. I didn’t want to see these things, preferring to experience the song as one thing, a kind of wave, not a collection of sounds made by several people in a room, perhaps at different times, according to some complicated arrangement.

I once saw Caetano Veloso in a film. I’d never seen him before, wasn’t expecting to see him, had no idea what he looked like. But when he opened his mouth, out came that voice—a voice, I realized, I’d never quite thought of as belonging to a person, nor even being a voice exactly but simply some BEAUTIFUL THING, the way maps are beautiful, or, say, manhole covers.

At the co-op yesterday, I watched a baby stick her foot in her mouth. She managed it without using her hands. After that, as I shopped, I made a mental list of things babies don’t know. It was a long list (babies know almost nothing), but today I can only remember four items: