The Sound Collector

By Janet Parkinson

Some people follow their favorite band—Jay follows the Poet. For two decades, the Poet’s words have given meaning to Jay’s life as a quality control inspector for a New England match factory. He memorizes all the words to every published poem and goes to as many readings as he can manage. Instead of recording bootlegs, however, he collects the sound vibrations of the poems in small glass jars, capturing the essence of individual poems as the Poet reads them aloud. But after years of devotion, a chance encounter makes Jay realize the depths of his own loneliness. Will a desperate trip to Bangkok give a new meaning to Jay’s life, or has he sunk too far into hero worship to regain his true self?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janet Parkinson
• Release date: May 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476183688

Janet Parkinson

Janet is a writer and published poet in Rhode Island. She has been writing most of her life and has participated in National Novel Writing Month seven times. Although she knows some obsessive fans, she is not one herself.

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The Sound Collector

by Janet Parkinson

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Janet Parkinson

Original cover art copyright 2012 Miles Small

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Chapter 1

Jay padded into his kitchen in the pre-dawn light, filled the electric kettle, and switched it on. The world outside was silent; the first birds still asleep, commuter traffic not yet begun. A slight frost touched the grass outside the apartment building. So it was a high silence, a little sharp. What salt for today, for this silence, this pause in noise?

He opened a cupboard with hydraulic hinges and pondered the rows of clear glass jars filled with salt, each jar labeled. Well, he thought, high and sharp. Seems like September 1999, Canberra, Australia. That was a special salt he didn’t use too often, but the quality seemed to jump across time and half the world to that reading and those words: the light rises against / the peaks / high in eagle’s air... . The Poet’s reading that night was high and sharp as well, the Australian accents in the crowd combining with the tang of the eucalyptus that Jay could smell everywhere in that city, even inside, even in a sealed room. And that night was cool, too, wasn’t it? And quiet outside, none of those sirens that sometimes shoot through and wreck the sound, send it going off sideways in a new direction, changing its quality altogether. Yes, sharp and high, Canberra 1999. Perfect.

He took the jar down and placed it on a quilted mat on the counter. Then he pulled his deep mug forward—his kettle had clicked off with an almost imperceptible snick while he was deciding; it had taken him three years to find just the right kettle with just the right sound, but all that time searching and every penny was worth it, he was still pleased every morning—and opened the jar, took out a pinch of salt with his fingertips, sprinkled it in the bottom of the mug, and poured in the hot water.

The tinkle of salt ringing in the mug, like ice breaking, he still needed to perfect that. Over the years, he had tried different things: pouring the water in first, then adding the salt, but that seemed to evaporate some of its essence right away by adding the sound of the water first; using a wide mug, almost an old-fashioned teacup, really, and touching the salt to the bottom, but a few grains would always stick to his fingers and have to be flicked off, the carefully placed pile would slide and fall, he could still hear the salt being added to the cup, no matter how carefully he tried to place it. It just got too stressful, he became too conscious of being imperfect too early in the morning and that would wreck the enjoyment of his routine. And the enjoyment, after all, was the point. So now he tried to hear in that smashing, bouncing sound some of the essence of whatever it was those particular crystals had absorbed: in this morning’s case, a highness and sharpness that wasn’t in the salt he used yesterday, for example—of course not, ridiculous to think that Atlanta, Georgia, in May 2004 would sound at all similar. Yesterday’s unexpected warmth and rain, so reminiscent of the Atlanta reading, had changed overnight, leaving him this dawn with frost and the Canberra essence in his morning drink.

Making sure the jar was tightly closed, he placed it back on the rubber lining in the cupboard before returning to his unlit bedroom, mug in hand. He raised the blinds of the three windows lining the wall at the foot of his bed and sat on top of the quilt, snuggled against the pillows, sipping his salt-laced hot water. His grandmother had drunk a cup of hot water first thing every morning and had lived well into her nineties. Jay wasn’t convinced it would extend his life, thought that had more to do with genes and avoiding car accidents and axe murderers, but it was a soothing ritual to begin the day. He hadn’t started adding the salt till about ten years ago, and then only the slightest pinch for flavor. Once each jar was empty, the ingestible sound was gone and he only had the sealed jar of the experience itself, which, of course, he would never open. So just a few grains, to enhance each morning, to connect him to the Poet, no matter what else the day held in store.

This Australian salt, for instance, was particularly special. Not that the salt was Australian; the reading was Australian, the sound was Australian, the essence. Jay had never been to Australia before, had never traveled that far, but the Poet was celebrating winning the Canberran poetry award, and Jay had to be there too. It was a once-in-a-lifetime honor, the Australian press kept saying, so, giddy with excitement, Jay booked his ticket on Quantas, and even booked one night in the same hotel as the Poet. That hadn’t taken as much research as he thought; he simply had called the Poet’s agent, posing as press, and she told him right away where he would be staying. The Queen Elizabeth, right on the main road, next to a lovely park and with easy access to all the sights. Of course, he wasn’t able to find out what room or floor the Poet was staying on, but just walking into the hotel lobby and breathing in the same air the Poet had exhaled was enough. Somewhere, amongst all those particles and atoms, was the carbon dioxide from the Poet’s lungs. He’d thought about collecting some of the air in the mini jars he carried with him for unexpected opportunities, but instead just breathed deeply, rapturously.

He hadn’t actually seen the Poet until the reading, hadn’t expected to, what with all the events and feting that was going on. But when he squeezed into that room with all those people—there must have been three hundred at least, a lot for poetry in Canberra, Australia—and the Poet read Now Is the Time of Our Death, such an old piece and one he hadn’t read in public since at least the 1970s, April 5, 1977 in Greenwich Village at the old Village Poetry Store, if Jay remembered rightly (and he was pretty sure he did), he was just blown away at his good fortune. Who would have guessed he would get something this rare?

With shaking hands he’d unscrewed the lid from his jar and sat there in bliss, drinking in every word, trying to time his inhales and exhales in tandem with the Poet, transfer a little air across the room, across the three hundred people who’d turned out on this wonderful night to hear these words. He’d kept the jar open through the applause at the end of the poem, which he usually avoided, feeling it changed the vibrations of the words. But the applause was tumultuous. Clearly this audience was made of true fans who recognized this special moment. And throughout the applause was the Poet saying, Thank you, thank you in his sonorous voice that carried so well he never used a microphone, so the sound Jay collected was always true.

Ah. He swirled the warm water in his mug and swallowed the last few drops. The sun was coming up now, and the birds were starting to waken as well. He was always happy when he could leisurely finish his drink before the day’s noise took over. It seemed purer. But once the day’s noise had begun, he didn’t need to be so careful to be silent himself. He took one more experimental swallow, the last four drops tricked down, he’d trained himself to let them trickle straight down the back of his throat, and took a deep, fulfilled breath.

What to do today? Well, work, of course. And a nap. Then, in the evening, after supper, maybe he would go by the Poet’s house, just to see if there were lights on. Maybe he would be home. Jay had stopped justifying to himself the thirty-five-mile trip to the Poet’s house in the adjoining state years ago. It made him happy, it did no harm, it wasn’t like he had anything else to do. And a nap after work caught him up on his sleep.

At thirty, he’d stumbled on a book by the Poet in a used bookstore, attracted by the title: Jagged Panther. Reading it had opened his eyes and his life to a dimension he hadn’t known existed. The Poet seemed to speak directly to him, statements and considerations rising off the page, and into his brain, rearranging and shifting the electrical connections, making him a new man. He hadn’t understood that words had this power, had never been much of a reader, had never really thought about poetry. It was a bolt of lightning, if he lived in the 1700s he would think it the hand of God smiting him, saying, This is what you need to listen to, this is what you should pay attention to, this is the meaning of your life. He’d stopped smoking pot, quit his job with an insurance agency, and broke up with his girlfriend of eight months.

What? she’d cried. "You’re dumping me because you read some stupid book? What are you, some kind of Moonie, for chrissakes?"

He’d bought all the Poet’s books and read them obsessively, absorbing all their wisdom, eventually memorizing each poem. When the Collected and Revised Poems came out, this caused him some problems, as the Poet had tinkered with quite a few, although always for the better Jay agreed, and he ended up learning both versions by heart. The Raven Revisited in particular caused him some anguish because it went through so many versions and he had to decide how to categorize them in his mind: by year of publication? year of revision? order in which he read it? In the end, he went with the last choice because it was easiest, although not strictly chronologically correct. But, Jay reasoned, with seven versions, there comes a point where he had to be able to simplify some part of the process. And if the Raven Revisited he read fifth was the one without the comma between lines 7 and 8 and with the change from a to the in line 26, even though technically it was written third, it would just be Raven Revisited: 5 in his own, private mind.

Chapter 2

Jay worked for the Safe-Tee Match Company in central Massachusetts as a Quality Control Inspector on the floor. This meant that he stood for hours amid the machinery, conveyor belts twisting like snakes or some extended example of a prepositional phrase—down and around and to and through, under and over and into and onto—standing, a solitary dot, checking row after row of red matchbooks as they floated past him. A solitary dot along with the other QCIs, of course.

Talking wasn’t so much discouraged as nearly impossible. Along with the giant prepositional phrase snaking its way around them came almost infinite examples of words for sound: clatter, chatter, hum, crash (when something went badly), skitter, rumble, roar, thrum. The owners kept promising to upgrade to more modern, quieter machinery, but the repairmen would glower darkly from the corners. They had a strange pride in keeping Sparky, as she was known with black humor, running in relatively fine fettle, and were highly suspicious of anything coming into their territory that they couldn’t fix with a blow from a hammer in the right spot. At OSHA’s insistence, all employees had been given earplugs several years ago, but it was a matter of pride for the repairmen not to wear them. The QCIs, on the other hand, took to them like the proverbial ducks to water. Management kept trying different types over the years; first were things like large earmuffs, which kept slipping off and were the cause of much scorn for the rookie mechanic when he made the mistake of actually being seen with them in public, on the floor. The current ones were bright green and disposable; each worker was issued five pairs a week to do with as they saw fit. Some of the more enterprising workers used one pair all week and sold the others outside nightclubs during particularly loud shows.

Jay nodded to Miranda next to him as he got into his place on the line. He was actually a QCIS, Quality Control Inspector Supervisor, but they were generally slightly short-staffed, so he worked the line along with the others. There were ten to twelve QCIs, spaced evenly at