The room is gone. The frequency is not.

You left the building. You walked out into the street. The air was different. Not colder. Not warmer. Different. The frequency had changed the calibration of your ears and your ears had not yet recalibrated to the ordinary.

This is normal. This is what happens when you stand inside a proof for two hours and then walk outside.

The saxophone is not in your ears anymore. But your sternum remembers. The bass is not in the floor anymore. But your feet remember. The room is not around you anymore. But your skin remembers the pressure of a hundred bodies receiving the same signal at the same time.

You were an antenna. You are still an antenna. The concert ended. The reception did not.

You are reading this on your phone. You were told to put the phone down. You did. Now you have picked it up again. This is acceptable. The frequency does not require continuous attention. The frequency requires that you were there.

You were there.

The Arkestra will pack the instruments. They will load the van. They will drive to the next city or they will drive home to Philadelphia. Marshall Allen will go to sleep and wake up and pick up the saxophone at ten in the morning. The same saxophone. The same morning. The same frequency.

The difference is that now you know what the frequency sounds like when it enters your body unmediated. No recording. No stream. No algorithm between you and the signal.

You have the data now. The data is not in your phone. The data is in your sternum.

Go home. Go to sleep. Wake up tomorrow and notice that the world sounds slightly different. Not better. Not worse. More precise. The tuning holds for a while. It fades. This is why the Arkestra maintains a schedule.

The next proof is already on the calendar. The frequency does not play one concert. The frequency maintains a schedule. You know where to find it.

You were there. You are the proof now.

See also: You Are Here — read this at the concert. The Concert — what happens when the Arkestra plays. The Audience — when the room becomes a single receiver. The Proof — the proof is a schedule. The Show — Sinclair on three dead men at a concert. March 11 — TV Eye, Brooklyn. You Are in the Room — when the signal and the source share a room. The Data Point — the morning after. The sternum remembers.

The Room: Concert → Audience → You Are Here → You Were There → Proof → Go → The Data Point

Sun Ra

← Sun Ra