Every Elevator Available

If I talk to a static surface—to the floor, for example, or if I do it through the air, apart from the alphabetical concatenation of the sentence, apart from the possible religious value that stays between the waves, what language carries on after the sentence goes through? After its silence.

If the conversation between two receivers waiting for an answer happens, does something actually change? “Non sei andata a scuola? Ba no!” (Have you been at school? Yes, sure!) In certain parts of Tuscany, the exclamation “No!” has an opposite meaning and magically becomes “Yes!” like a well-done litotes can. But I don’t want to talk about that. Each language has idioms and ways to spin things around. Here I’m asking if language can carry on something that goes over the etymological aspect of the words, even when nobody is actually listening. It sure does! And I believe that each silence between words can be a reinforcement of what comes right after. I’m saying that because I’m writing something after I have already said it, exchanged, recorded, and for a second I don’t really see the purpose. Why should I write something about something that is already done, recorded, forgotten? But let’s take a step back. If you say something, like a friend of mine used to say, if you name it out loud, that thing should appear. If you say “wolf,” for example, a wolf will materialize. But how many are there? Wolves are never alone. How hungry are the words describing its appetite? This seems not transpiring from the name transported by the air into reality; only magic will stop me with this nonsense.

The description of reality is never enough to mirror reality itself. What is that hint that lurks between one sentence and another, that thing that is neither the meaning nor the acoustic image of the thing it is meant to represent?

I’m not sure why, but cyclically I end up rolling with Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics. Hey look, there’s a hill there! The hill appears in our minds, probably with all the characteristics that a hill has or can have. But it is the timbre of the voice that tells us about it—its intensity, its form, its extension. Or is it then the words, hatching, sloping, greening, that precisely describe its color, its unfolding in the landscape? What do we remember most easily? The voice, or the words being spoken? In fact, it is the timbre of the voice that tells us whether that particular wolf is hungry, or tame, or frightened. It certainly won’t tell us why. But then I think that words and their meaning may actually be the most overpowering thing, definitely the most incisive element for our bank. I don’t know, it depends.

Let’s say our languages are made up of a layered overlay of timbre and signifiers that when stripped of meaning can detect a new linguistic structure—pure, full of everything that is not descriptive, analytical, conceptual. Something never heard before. For a moment I wish I had an application, an audio program, that would separate every single phoneme from the words of a long conversation in real time. It probably exists. I would like to have two horizontal diagrams made up of spherical-oval icons, walking hand in hand: a red one for the phonemes, a light blue one just below for the compound words. Between these flowing blocks, I imagine discovering tiny roots growing and connecting the two parts, threadlike, fine.

What information do phonemes and words exchange? Like cursing something? Turning the sentence around? If a speech turns into a phoneme while maintaining its dynamics, pitches, and durations, we can say that we are dealing with a glossolalia, a long lalla, which extends with its pauses from A to B, including repetitions, themes, refrains, all the ornaments and redundant repetitions that we have in our conversations. But is the word, when stripped of meanings and signifiers, really simply a beautiful grammar of several sounds? Mmm, back to our wolf for a second. If we imitate his verse, his vocal gesture, let us do so with an E minor attack that from pianissimo suddenly rises sharply, then descends into a short pause of a beat.

Are we so sure that this can express that particular concern? Fear, anger? What if there was no one listening to that wolf, observing that hill? What if that yowling began and ended between the ground and the grassy boulders around it? What if observing the hill was nothing but a house reflected in its silence? Here words or signs would be useless to describe it. About the conversation with “Anna Leopardo,” Hanne Lippard and I remember several things: There was a change of plan, a phone call, an address to look up on a map, timetables and trains to catch. One or more metro stops.

The anteroom of the recording booth, a few papers, two microphones. The leopard was silent. In addition to the many air trails that, by “his” own admission, deliberately snake in and around “his” texts, that same question posed at the beginning of this introductory “hat” tried to articulate itself without reaching a resolution of its own. What does language bring with it? Geography, conversations, encounters. But here too, in that situation, the word and its voice were not fully identified with a precise if, but with labials, extended sibilants, controlled dentals that slowly rise between the pause seconds of a paper just seen descending. It is difficult to transcribe that, the breath that registers the things. If the timbral value increases the perception of the word, then can the word l-e-m-o-n trigger more saliva than a drop of its juice on the tongue?

—Francesco Cavaliere

So, I wrote you this about the escalator piece, you know? And I saw the etymological meaning of the escalator in different lands and languages and where this word comes from, for example, elevators; to let someone rise up or, for instance, somebody planning to climb a mountain and things like that. And I’m wondering, why did you choose this particular word, since it’s also a constant movement, almost like a loop? Do you choose this word because you have a specific picture, an image, or is it more like a feeling, more like a separate thought you want to elevate somewhere?

So it’s like almost the same thing but actually it isn’t, the elevator, which is also a box, it’s like a super-silent box. In the silent box we feel part of the place, we become one of the walls. A place where you are on your own, if you are on your own. When you’re with somebody you don’t know, then you try to keep it as silent as you can, try to be invisible, you don’t want to interact. What about this combination of a silent place and being by yourself? What do you think about it?

I feel that whatever you say in that particular place with an unknown person, the words gain a new value, the speech becomes somehow underlined. If I have to send an audio message to the elevator it’s kind of perfect… you know. You have this perfect silence, perfect timing, and you go upstairs. The elevator is definitely a special, nice recording place! I can picture you practicing your things, your texts that you may need to read. So, I’m curious about these transitory moments between spaces and your practice. Do you sometimes talk to yourself and if... you do have frequent sentences you repeat to yourself?

Yeah, yeah, “bah.”

Recording something, are you outside in the street and you just talk to yourself, or repeat something that you’re learning, a new language for instance? We basically work like a body recorder, like a child listening and learning a language. We do this, I think it’s pretty normal, if you talk to yourself, specific words because you are learning. It’s so basic, yeah, the mechanical process of it can be very frustrating. But we have this, I mean it’s obvious, the mouth, our ears, are there, but at the same time you don’t think so much about it, so we are surprised when we perceive how we get the outside-world information, we use something that we don’t recall.

It’s almost like a box where you throw away your mistakes, your weaknesses, the words are invisible and you become your invisible therapist. It’s yourself and your language. The language has this power, almost like an exorcism, or something like it. You know, I don’t know if you should go through this again, but yes this question rolls in my mind and maybe it would be cool to go through it. When you see a microphone, do you think of it like an extension of yourself? Or is it just a tool to amplify yourself?

Yeah, a microphone, and people always say that a microphone is an extension of our body, but I don’t think so, I don’t feel like that. I’m rather close to what you are saying. It’s more like a shield, an invisible aura that suddenly becomes visible, very close, the voice, it’s only sound.

Do you often use the microphone also without the audience, like a tool to store things, thoughts, notes, or things like that?

How about the battery right now?

Okay, okay, I’m saying, if you have any particular pleasure to use words because they have a strong image, so people can really see what you are saying? Or the sound and the vocabulary of the speech is much more important than the picture you want people to visualize?

If you repeat “exit exist” so much, then “the exit” is going to be close, and I think we already have lots of material.