Interdimensional Field Recordings: Sanctuary, the Heat Death of the Universe

Liner Notes

Introducing Interdimensional Field Recordings: Sanctuary, the Heat Death of the Universe.

"Found field recordings taken outside of space and time."

Begin engulfed in impressions of a moment before time: a vast primordial soup, ambient generative melodies acting upon one another like molecules in a wave-shaped biological soundscape. Experience deep time passing, slowly, until it yields LUCA. Rest at an altar where guitar is played and gongs ring across the sanctuary of earth. Then briefly find yourself adrift within a backdrop of stars as the self dissolves. And finally, witness the end of everything in a dark simmer of throat singing and ominous flutes: the Universe's Heat Death.

Thank you for listening!

- Tim Aldric

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Known Gateways

“Before the Listening, there were only vibrations.”

“Where could it be?” I asked.

The man did not move. His stillness had the quality of draped linen on oak. Heaviness without effort. Beneath the punumulta robe I sensed something structural, some old force that had long ceased needing to prove itself. His grey beard stirred from the slow breath moving through the Sanctuary. The same wind reached the trees beyond the pillars. Carved wooden idols shifted where the leaf-shadows crossed them. Making it seem as if they were dancing behind the Punumulta Monk. Cross-legged he faced me. His eyes were open, but his attention was elsewhere. Cast far inward.

He spoke.

“Search for the opposite of doubt and you may find it. Thread lightly, those who long for the search itself are already lost within it.”

…

As his timbre settled into the cave’s low frequencies: “You are the child standing before the window, pointing at what lies outside, believing that is all there is.”

The waterfall had been constant noise until now, as it blended into his voice as though it had always been the same sound. The reverberation faded behind the spray of water. Something inside me began to negotiate.

I tried to hold the image he’d given me. The window. The child. Was I meant to open this window? Could it be opened? And what was it made of? Was I even the child, or was I the window itself?

“I see you are wondering whether you are the child,” he said. “That is human doubt.”

How did he know?

“As long as you doubt, be convicted of this: there is no other way to be human. To be without doubt is to descend the 1000-step ladder. If this is true, certainty is one step toward the animal, one step away from the esoteric, from the beyond-meaning, from the eye. If this is true, a doubtful soul stands above the animal. But only because doubt is a bridge: between the soul and all other possibilities. If this is true, then this is the ultimate freedom of choice. It is the defining burden of a corpse that carries a soul.”

A pause.

“What lies beyond doubt? One might say: certainty. But certainty is a veil sewn to hide the fear of death. It is a soul attempting to drain the ocean by drinking it. Those who are certain are animal. They lean not on spirit but on dogma, and refuse new questions. The doubtful mind is the questioning mind. The venturing mind. The creative.”

I turned inward to search the texture of my own doubt and examined what it was made of, what held it together. What I found was not a wall but a fork. Several paths, none visible past a certain distance. Fog blanketed each end. I felt the pull to extend myself somehow, to grow taller, to see further down each road before committing to the walk.

I did not.

I examined the paths.

They remained.

I chose the center one and walked. What followed was not arrival but clarification. As though all paths collapsed upon another to reveal aspects of the same Path. As though the fog had always lived inside of me rather than ahead. I was finally looking up at sunlight from underwater.

Then I was rising. Then I broke the surface.

To become Listening.

To become self.

There is no opposite to doubt. A soul slips the bodily sheath.

The waterfall returned first.

Then the cave. Then the weight of my arms pulling my shoulders down to the sensation of my sitting bones upon stone. These sensations came back the way contours do after crossing the threshold into a dark room: at the edge, unfocused, washed.

The monk had not moved.

“You surfaced” he said.

“Something dissolved,” I said. “Or I dissolved. I’m not sure of the distinction.”

“There is no distinction. That is what you are now learning to be afraid of.”

I looked at him. His eyes had stopped looking inward. They reflected with the color of old ash and patience.

“What I felt…” I began.

“Do not name it.”

I stopped.

“The moment you name it, you have made it a possession. You will spend the rest of your life defending it from thieves who are only your future selves, wanting to feel it again.” A pause long enough for the water to complete one of its rhythms. “Tell me instead what remained when you surfaced.”

“A question,” I said. “The same one. Still there.” As an old beard moved: “Then you have ascended one rung!” His voice bellowed and echoed through the cave as the waterfall smashed and sloshed his words into a maelstrom. Something dropped in me. Like a load-bearing wall revealing it held up nothing. “How many rungs are there?” I asked. “You are still counting,” he said. “This is why you ask.” His voice rested upon the reverb tail of earlier bellowing, like a dog’s head on its tail after a long walk.

Outside, the leaf-shadows continued their slow crossing of the idols. One shadow passed across a hollow-eyed figure, arms raised in a gesture I could not read. It might have been surrender. It might have been an offering. I understood then that the sculptor had intended both. “The window,” I said. “The child. I was neither.” He waited. “I was the act of looking.”

The monk was quiet for a long time. Long enough that I began to distrust what I’d said, to hear it as performance, to feel the pride hiding inside the words.

He had felt it too. I was certain.

“Now,” he said, “you are beginning.“