Lid EMBA  |  Decibelia  |  Hearsay  |  Non-Fiction  |  Telezygote

I was about ten years old when I made my first recording. No drums. No guitars. No music. Instead, the family dog being hit by a car. An accidental preservation of an accident. I was playing with friends in someone’s front yard, our neighborhood being one of the few in a sprawling Floridian network of green lakes; skinny, winding roads fed by dead-end tributaries, sometimes paved, often dirt; and dense tracts of mossed cypress.

Paddy, my mangy, clueless, and eternally happy mutt, was obstinately chasing cars as they zoomed by, something my friends and I would have done as well had we been dogs. I had a portable cassette recorder, an exotic technology back then, and happened to be taping some silliness when we heard the impact. Our heads whipped around. A sun-beamed sports car sat cockeyed, lightly vibrating. I ran out to the road; Paddy’s head lifted as he saw me. He tried to stand and walk, probably in shock, but fell and dragged himself with his front paws. His back legs were broken. My Dad appeared out of nowhere. He sped Paddy away in the backseat, ignoring the outraged driver.

We played the tape back, first hearing our chatter, then a few honks, skidding tires, and a smash smeared with popping glass. That afternoon I walked around the neighborhood playing the tape for anyone who would listen, including my Mother. I was fascinated and kept looping the horror. Only later, when moonlight replaced the heat of day, did the weight of the sudden, terrible violence descend and envelop me. After we got the call that Paddy had died at the vet's, the driver appeared at our door and asked my Dad to pay for his busted headlights.

The tape disappeared long ago, but it plays permanently in my memory when triggered. The various musical/ psychic phases in my life have been signposted with recordings ever since; cassettes, vinyl, and CDs featuring this or that band, this or that genre, this or that high hope or doomed din. None has been able to approximate the irrational tangle of tones, emotions, movement, and superimposed auditory spirits narrated by that first tape. Until I started doing Lid Emba.