The sudden obtrusiveness of the sound gave way and turned into an unexpected listening experience.

I thought it was due to some external circumstance that might have triggered this change. But the fence was still being repaired. Someone started again, far away, nailing the slats together, and the bird outside my window continued to make noises. Throaty, voluminous, short noises.

Apparently something was settling in my head. Was it the short-term agreement among all the other announcements, as if a secret score was at the bottom of it all, or perhaps the timbres that were meant for each other?

Then I thought it must have been the distance that set my ears on their way. I concentrated on the distances, very close, far away, somewhere in between:

The distant dry clicking of a hammer on the heads of nails and the voice of the animal, very close, almost without distance. In the moment of simultaneity I became wide awake. I listened. The pauses were filled with my expectation of the next sound. Their immediately created rhythmic patterns dissolved again as soon as they were created. There was no structure. I listened into the pauses, as into time itself.

Berlin, October 1994