I don’t know how else to describe the tumult produced by the MRI, so multiform and powerful that it was paralyzing, preventing me from moving forward and even seeing where I was: a chaotic unfurling of enormous sounds, like an alarm siren, an 18-wheeler’s horn, and a jackhammer all mixed together, alternating with mind-numbing jigsaw solos, monstrous duos for crusher and stamping press, vociferous trios for chain saw, grand organs, and rock drill on a counterpoint of a prehistoric ondes Martenot, the whole thing punctuated by constant and contradictory percussion, without order or relation, as if fourteen deaf, psychopathic drummers were facing off in a rage.
—Jean Echenoz, Command Performance, trans. Mark Polizzotti (2020/2025), ch. 35
Skip to content
theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks