Somewhere, I sit in one of the many Zen gardens. My interest is first and foremost in the place. I just want to look at it. But what I find is an island of silence, in the middle of Kyoto.

I sit and rest and listen to the sounds of traffic at lunchtime. No one else is staying here. I am geographically in the middle of the city. But here it is deserted. I hear many variations of urban sounds, but it is also strangely quiet. My self-forgetfulness does not go as far as to confuse the sounds of traffic with the sound of the sea, but otherwise my reception corresponds exactly to this sound of nature. The multi-lane roads seem to be quite a distance away. Because they reach my ear as if over a long distance. It is very pleasant to hear this stretching and sometimes more dominant sound line from a distance. Like a beat, the sound fills the garden. A sound passing by over a long distance, simultaneously in motion and yet constant. A process that is moving away, but which can be heard at any time as if it were coming from one place.

My eyes wander the place, but do not get stuck anywhere. My ears concentrate on the expansion of the sound. Again and again I hear myself into the last remnant of volume when the sound seems to come to a standstill. This abandoned Zen garden, an island of silence, in the middle of the city, seems to be at the outermost edge of an acoustic expansion. A plate comes to my mind, many plates. Transparently overlapping each other. One of these plate edges is where my ears are probably at right now.

Kyoto, October 1994