THE UNDERCURRENTS 

                        (whispered reading)

Listening below the surface of a cliff, and listening towards the inside of skin implies practising a different kind of attention. Working with the vibrations of the energy that passes through the body to experience how to tune acoustic thought to that which is outside. How to connect with the damaged materiality of the ocean? How to speak from the affections of biological knowledge? What is the scale of human breath?

                        (vigorous breathing)

The vast Atlantic Ocean shelters in a marine basin on the northern coast of Spain, formed by the collision of two tectonic plates,and is named the Cantabrian Sea. On the calcareous coastline of Asturias, looking away from the sea, I have a view of a stretch from the Sierra de Cuera. I think of Astrida Neimanis writing about how our bodies were actually formed by the desire of waters wanting to reach the mountains. From this rocky horizon, grunting sentences come to me at sea level. In this place the sea’s throat manifests itself through the jesters of Llanes.

The wind begins its dialogue with the earth, of water
Inside the limestone gorge the ancestors speak
                                                           It is the ocean
                                                           Its mouth is the song of all mouths, of foam
The breathy voices of the sea summon all living things in their resonance

The limestone dissolves in contact with rainwater that penetrates through small fractures into the sea. The erosive action of the waves animated by gales, enlarges the cavities until they form caves in communication with the vertical fracture. The waves cause the accumulation of air and water in the cave to be compressed and escape at high pressure to the outside. The jesters are thus mouths of the sea, “bramadorius” in Asturian language. The driving force of the oceanic diaphragm makes the larynx rumble inside the chest.

                        (sssssshhhhhhhhhh fff fff fff fff fff   sssssshhhhhhhhhh   fff fff fff fff fff)

Oceanic romance occurs as the breathers’ lips
draw closer to each other receiving the influx of oxygen from cyanobacteria
With each inhalation we move far away from the shores

The fluidity of oceanic breathing connects us with the life of the sea, its materiality, and that of its inhabitants. If we could go beyond the constraints of our perception, we would see phytoplankton, tiny organisms that recycle CO2 into oxygen, intertwining our breath with theirs. A meaningful connection to our ancestors and our aquatic selves. To think of the scale of breath is to think of the link between our individuality and the collective planet. Between inner space and outer space. Cyanobacteria release what we need to live, transforming our toxicity. Marine toxicity also contains the trace of oppressive relations with other human bodies, the ocean is a sea of memory, a substance that retains a disparity of temporalities. Marine toxicity also retains the atoms of those who have perished in the water. Here, on this wet-mouthed cliff, I think of the words by adrienne maree brown when they invite us to reflect on breathing as an offering towards the possibility that, instead of continuing the trajectory of enslavement, imprisonment and domination, we practise another way of breathing.

                        (sssssshhhhhhhhhh fff fff fff fff fff   sssssshhhhhhhhhh   fff fff fff fff fff)

The voice of the ocean intertwines in the throat
moisture outflow
throat fleshy cavity sumptuousness
Immersed in language without needing to possess it
Or without being possessed by it
The ocean speaks
                                                           See the scars
                                                           My wounds
                                                           On these rocks
                                                           I’m still dying
                                                           Feel my mouth like slippery flesh
                                                           Breathing endlessly in this assent off horizon

To awaken the acoustic body you have to breathe with the throat to then work on the sound transmission. How to utter sound with the voice, how to tune the body with the sea. To make the two into one, to make the inner as the outer, and the outer as the inner and the higher as the lower, and the human as the non-human.

                        (sustained inward gaze, steady and continuous breathing)

Push the jaw down so that there is an unusual space between the teeth. With your mouth closed, inflate your lower abdomen. Place one hand on top to increase the sensation. Breathe in and out through your nose in a quiet rhythm. Slowly move the air towards the back of the mouth, exploring its cavities. Gradually, the larynx becomes a valve, the air travels as if through a grotto, from the abdomen. The density of the breath is felt, a continuous, weightless movement.

                        (a soft inner shishishishishishishi is revealed)

The breathers speak
                                                          We speak as we breathe
                                                           It is the ocean
                                                           Vibrant, cyclical
Breathing passes from one body to another
It is between-bodies
Mouths that salivate within
Oh rocks
Is this tangled love the trouble you promise?
This sea more mountainous
and agitated with its manure of shipwrecks
Beauty of waves or
shelter of tentacular mourning?

                        (oceanic murmur)

Guttural breathing becomes sound. The whole body is rock through which the air passes. After a while of inhabiting the oceanic breath, a slight snore begins to resonate inside the trachea, the inspiration happens like a lament. The form becomes a marine wound, the word a breathing sound. The acoustic body emerges, where breathing is not simply the manifestation of a vital force but a radically different dimension of oceanic cognition. Uneasiness in the sea, uneasiness in the voice.

This text has been influenced by conversations with Snejanka Mihaylova on acoustic thinking as transcendental practice, the readings of Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake” de Christina Sharpe, “Bodies of Water” de Astrida Neimanis and “Undrowned” de Alexis Pauline Gumbs.

(Featured image: Bufones de Arenillas, Llanes (Asturias). Courtesy Cristina Ramos González.)