01.08.

To begin

02.08.

To organize
The world
In squares
And overthrow
A government
Of yesterdays
Where
Blank pages
Fill in
For
Missing pictures

03.08.

To build
Simple
Brick and mortar
Structures
And lease them
As monuments
Vulnerable
To inflation
Of personal
Values

04.08.

To burn
A souvenir
Or two

05.08.

To peep
Through
The leaves
Of someone’s
Life

06.08.

To dive
For sunken
Ships

07.08.

To recognize
Yourself
In the mirror
One last
Time

08.08.

To farm
Landscapes
And
Harvest
Promises
Of something
Pure

09.08.

To sit
On a watermelon
And never
Wash
Your pants

10.08.

To elevate
Buildings
In great proximity
And walk
The shadows
Inbetween

11.08.

To ride
A bike
Through the
Alleys
Inside
The factory
Of bias

12.08.

To have
A layover
At the
Geographic center
Of a
Dream

13.08.

To savour
The aftertaste
Of aftertaste

14.08.

To miss the
Next best
Opportunity
And
Walk into
A monarchy
Of monoculture

15.08.

To reuse
Ideas
Of various
Colors and sizes
And build
New castles
From
Old words

16.08.

To become
A frog
And swallow
A snake

17.08.

To speed up
Backwards
And reach
Highest
Velocity
A moment
After
Oblivion

18.08.

To turn
Straight
Narratives
Into
Curves
And dance
To the rhythms
Of obvious
Lies

19.08.

To reduce
Beauty
To the sight
Of canola
Fields
And fabricated
Flowers

20.08.

To throw
A chair
At an
Imaginary
Wall

21.08.

To experience
The tension
Of sitting
On a
Broken
Bench

22.08.

To question
The patterns
Of the
Traffic
Lights

23.08.

To dream
Of houses
Accommodating
The echoes
Of singing
Voices

24.08.

To negate
The dynamics
Of the atmosphere
And create
Small
Air movements
In windless
Places

25.08.

To awe
At magnificent
New materials
And
The environmental
Footprint
Of burning
Fabrics

26.08.

To experience
Terror and tenderness
Through
The body
Of a
Bat

27.08.

To listen
To the cicadas
And to hear
The multitudes
Of time
Compressed
Into a single
Layer

28.08.

To feel
Shapes
Moving
In the dark

29.08.

To stare
At a pot
And wait
For the water
To boil

30.08.

To become
A ghost

31.08.

To end

On July 24th at 11:40am I got a notification that I had been added to a Telegram group called Manual. “MANUAL ist ein Handbuch des Unsinns,” the text that followed explained, in German and in English, “a guide of nonsense; a set of rules impossible to follow…” The text named Manual’s collaborators, and listed out a schedule for when the collaborations would appear. It was signed off with a dove emoji. An eye icon in the lower corner indicated that it had been seen by many; it was replied to by none. A week passed before another message appeared on August 1st. It said simply, “To begin.”

I guess I had no choice but to comply. What was I doing on August 1st at 8am? The day had started, and so had I, with a cup of coffee in hand, probably sitting by the window, probably an open one since it was August. I was likely listening to the news, since it was August 1st and I’d yet to start my new ritual, I mean not really, despite the command I’d received by text. The next day, the text from Manual was an audio file, a blue play button with writing underneath. The line breaks suggested it was a poem, but the verb at the beginning reminded me of Fluxus-style script. “To organize the world in squares…” Not quite an imperative, but a set of rules or perhaps parameters. Bird sounds started after the play button, then a sound like shimmering. “...and overthrow a government of yesterdays.”

From then on, a text and a song every morning at 8am, a soundtrack to my morning coffee. Sometimes a plodding, clanging soundtrack, a score for building monuments. Sometimes reedy woodwinds or rippling tones against chirping nature sounds. In each case, the music seemed to be following the text script, which began to feel more and more like instructions only music could follow. “To peep through the leaves of someone’s life.” I thought of Pauline Oliveros and her sonic meditations, which she called “recipes” for listening. I thought of my favorite one: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.” I remembered the schedule in the first text, and scrolled up to read it. Museum of No Art had been providing the music to my mornings so far. Mitko Mitkov had written the recipes. 

Months later, Mitko told me how it went. He had divided the month into four cycles, with every cycle containing about seven to eight days. He wrote the texts, which he sometimes called fragments, and which often presented themselves in his mind like pictures. He asked four artists doing multi instrumental work to make music for every cycle, reading the text like a manual, a poem that tells you what to do. Different people had different approaches. Two made a continuous soundtrack for their entire set of texts, one piece from beginning to end, then divided it up into chapters. The two others are as fragmented as the texts, with entirely different sounds to match the tone of each poem.

Ubaldo was one of the artists who created one piece consisting of seven different chapters, one for each text in their cycle. Guitar: twangy, brooding, swelling, glistening. “To have a layover at the geographic center of a dream.” I woke up, sipped my coffee, listened to my texts. I rode the train from London to Edinburgh, looked out over the blur of the Scottish hills from my window. I got some bad news over the phone. I realized how, in Telegram, if you did nothing after the song played, it would continue to play the previous day’s song-text. A growing record, longer day by day, played in reverse. 

On August 17th, Jonas Hinnerkort’s cycle started. My in-laws came to visit. We slept on the floor in the office and made everyone coffee in the kitchen. Jonas’ cycle was another continuous one; with each track it felt like there was a new layer put over the last. Percussive, rhythmic, “to speed up backwards and reach highest velocity.” Time got faster, like it does every year right before fall. I felt excited, grateful, a familiar hollow yearning.

The last cycle began. An ambient melody by Philomena Lauprecht, soothing, something hopeful, “...and create small air movements in windless places.” Synthy and scratchy, “...to feel shapes moving in the dark.” A friend recommended I read Friederike Mayröcker. I ordered The Communing Vessels. I liked how she uses 1 instead of “a,” her lyrical elegy, her disorienting language for grief. I read about how she gave the musicologist Otto Brusatti eight pages from a book she was working on, and he found music to accompany it, and they put on a production called OPER! in 2018. I thought about translating poetry to music, a sense-to-sense translation, but also about how the two languages were not so different. You can usually find traces of one in the other. Philomena’s last song was softer, with silences audible in-between the notes. “To become a ghost.” And finally, on August 31st: “To end.”

Text: Meg Miller