By Dave Brinks | February 24, 2008

The Geometry of Sound

aleph / genome

scriptio infinitum beginning at the end you come to a place where sound travels through rock the aperture is porphyry plucked violins spur of the valley the epiphany of pythia an outcrop of ridges orpheus ascending still nothing is known of the occipital text which brought him here afire and aglow but to be born out of silence all the dimensions the square flat ones euclidean space is optional when climbing the sky look at the duration of two circles conjoined at the hip caduceus shedding its skin moments of involuntary bliss and what sense lay bare

indef. art.

0 one of four blood groups
1 the measurements of a room
2 a dry wine
3 acceleration
4 shaped like a double helix
5 infinite length
6 separated by distance
7 the form of an orange

first lumen
an elaborate prospectus of skulls

second lumen
despite their unhealthy melancholic appearance

third lumen
taste and smell are receptors for blue and red

beth / genome

you are a house a tree and its raiment of leaves you move as all creatures move in sleep from an upright position neither firmly nor dissolute your speech echoes water drawn up in buckets were I to see out from your mind as a field at your feet I would burst from your mouth as the temple of ishtar a be-shekeled pilgrim a bushel of wheat were you to see your own mind covered in feathers the clouds would dissemble the sun would break you are an instrument of merry noise whose nature is to create

abbr.

0 breath
1 a unit of luminous intensity
2 goddess of land weather and crops
3 the floorplan of a house in egyptian hieroglyphs
4 occurs in hard black crystal
5 magnetic flux density
6 the color blue
7 can be used as a bioweapon

first lumen
I’m reaching for a toy in the cereal box

second lumen
the caterpillar has no idea it’s a butterfly

third lumen
feel the color yellow hold it in your hand

gimel / genome

the act of breathing becomes a lesson the bygone historie à suspens I’m writing pictures of animal sounds the problem is not noticing they are you or me being bleated and sneezed at by goats in ten strokes an anxious putty penumbra performs another glyph flesh-tested full of grizzly outdoors under the methodology of leaf light is propagated into air what say the richness of the stammerer speak up if you’re alive the universe ticks and dilates a quiet pattern of buffalo takes mount overlooking a stream all questions are answers to all questions awaiting your appeal

v.

0 gamma for the speed of light
1 one of four nucleotides used in DNA
2 a string key or pipe tuned to the pitch of this tone
3 one hundred
4 the volume of a sphere equals the circumference cubed
5 divided by pi
6 the element carbon
7 A E I O U sometimes Y

first lumen
the humpback brain knows east is not north

second lumen
smiling at my sandwich I choose the horn section

third lumen
green is a demiurge to do something beautiful

daleth / genome

how much noise does the entire life of one body contain what do the coroner’s prodding gloves find under the knife’s incisions I’m taking sounds apart where dark the vigil does nothing yet stirs the weather is less than human and more than galaxy let little puzzle pieces of skyline stake a path between your eyes let the restful air of oak and spanish moss hanging from its limbs know you by name at funerals in new orleans second liners sing oh didn’t he ramble what better means than by proxy to learn how silence is made

n. pl.

0 a launch vehicle
1 for a fish or a door
2 carrying 2,272 nuclear warheads
3 passing through the center of a circle
4 where the mouth of a river
5 flows into a meta-universe
6 triangular in shape
7 Daena Damballah Danu

first lumen
attach your mind to the end of a string

second lumen
bend it sideways forming equal lengths

third lumen
you are a triangle whose circle forms a square

No Image

heh / genome

a dearth of lumen the oasis of fresh pond alongside a road one number can describe all the objects inside your house I like the idea of being a bottle of milk or heavy cream doesn’t everyone sleep in persian blue satin sheets like cucumbers in a box of snow I do laughter in a boat to study the hours in each but to say all the rules are broken as bricks or windows or human as an achievement or a crime some moments are not meant to distract and there are still fewer ways to feel

v. i..

0 a praying or calling human
1 e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ
2 the fifth brightest star in a constellation
3 (eryngium)
4 a transcendental number
5 elasticity
6 multiply by 10 to the power of
7 Earth

first lumen
milliseconds like the presence of color

second lumen
charting a melody toward erasure

third lumen
greenhouse gases petrochemical wastes

vav / genome

everything arrives like a mountain squeezed up from conversations between molten river and rock leisurely you abide by any shape of letter but with a lover you look through the eyes listening on the backs of swans skin touching skin the hands are never unsure as to how the anatomy should please nor does sound leave the ears guessing for a word though if an appearance comes forth like indigo or scarlet it’s a sentient direction guided by la luna to which and for whom I smile while the mind crawls back to its origins of ocean

adv.

0 the feminine grammatical gender
1 bioavailability
2 Friday or February
3 F can be a euphemism for the word fuck
4 a focal point in concave mirrors
5 the harmonic mean of precision and recall
6 type of atomic orbital
7 that classifies tornadoes

first lumen
hovering in front of you is your own

second lumen
almost permanently tired face

third lumen
fresh peaches stir behind the eyes

kheth / genome

belonging to a room the warm glow of flowerpot the mantelpiece light-green light-blue but on the other side of the wall you trouble yourself elsewhere walking a river the dead churning beside you with long staffs earth mother sitting with her hands in her lap her courtiers on horseback raising their hats don’t you know who I am I only make love to men from the gold of my neck & down come as you are image-carver conduct yourself to my chamber risk everything this picture sound number slips through an inner door and up the stairs

conj.

0 field intensity
1 a preparation of cannibus
2 energy multiplied by time
3 B flat, A, C, B natural
4 total heat
5 harbor hard husband
6 the human mitochondrial
7 atomic number 1

first lumen
a double portrait of wife and husband

second lumen
whose feet are planted firmly on the ground

third lumen
slyly to one side the clasping of hands

yôdh / genome

consigned to the underworld you of the fair-spoken mouth are the shopkeeper’s remnants of a painted scene your ever kind eye is a syllabary for ivory and silver fitted on the tongue by seafarers blooming sheepfold under shining polaris what enters the mind at the doorstep for arm and hand is a lovely dung-heap the ripening corn a necklace of acorns ransomed by tears from byblos to cadiz today i saw the first hominids bipedaling snorting cavorting their no longer puny brains like birds have an extended shelf-life crimson darkest purple a sharp stick in wet clay

pron.

0 identity matrix
1 radio frequencies from 8 GHz to 10 GHz
2 the imaginary unit
3 as in sea water or rocks
4 symbol for supergiants
5 moment of inertia
6 exaggerated self-worth
7 stuffed cow’s eyes are a delicacy

first lumen
there are many questions to be unanswered

second lumen
when the operetta of stars comes hurtling

third lumen
the yew the cypress the laurel ad libitum

Notes

Genomes.

Each letter in The Geometry of Sound contains a genome of exactly 97 words.

97 is the 25th prime number (largest two-digit prime number in base 10).

97 is the tenth member of the Mian-Chowla sequence.

Since there is no integer that added to its own digits adds up to 97, 97 is a self number in base 10.

The vast majority of DNA in the human genome — 97% — has no known function.

Octaves and the Octet.

Each letter in The Geometry of Sound contains a 0 - 7 sequence.

In the diatonic scale, and the other standard heptatonic scales of Western music, there are 8 notes if one counts both ends.

Similarly, one may refer to the relationship between two notes when speaking of a range of notes that fall between a pair an octave apart.

Octet, as used by Buckminster Fuller, is a combination of the words Octahedron and Tetrahedron, the two Platonic solids that in Fuller's geometrical system filled all space, e.g., octet truss.

Octet is a group of 8 bits, often referred to as a byte.

The Octet Rule is a simple chemical rule of thumb that states that atoms tend to combine in such a way that they each have eight electrons in their valence shells, giving them the same electronic configuration as a noble gas.

Lumens.

Just as the human eye normally contains only three types of color receptors, each letter in The Geometry of Sound contains three lumens.

Most mammalian brains respond to light stimulus via a three-dimensional sensation, which can generally be modeled as a mixture of three primary colors.

Lumen (lm) is the SI unit of luminous flux, a measure of the perceived power of light.