Bring enough tapes to last your time out of the house. At the intersection of avant garde cellist and disco hitmaker, there lived Arthur Russell. Every day, he walked to the Hudson River, listening to his echoes. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1992. In found space, dance leaves time residue. AIDS is not over. You can still feel every assshaking in the slippery air. Arthur didn’t want you to come in and play his drum line. He wanted you to bring yourself into him bringing you together in his oceanic room. That’s where i came looking. i was in my bedroom arranging discos. He was on the Staten Island Ferry, editing cassette tapes in his head. i was at Hey Queen, losing my nostalgia for the nightlife. He had his eyes closed on the Gallery dance floor. I heard transmissions, light flecks, sweat.

TheSoundWasOfTheWorldAlready

Audio for “OVERTURE” and “excerpt from THE SOUND WAS OF THE WORLD ALREADY” by Charles Theonia and Jonah Rosenberg

Charles Theonia is a poet and teacher from Brooklyn, where they’re working to externalize interior femme landscapes. They are the author of artbook Saw Palmettos, on hormones, community, and the brain-time continuum (Container, 2018) and chapbook Which One Is the Bridge (Topside Press, 2015).

Jonah Rosenberg is a composer and sound designer — www.jonahrosenberg.com & https://paleontol0gist.bandcamp.com/releases