This week, a Kind of Harmony released their episode featuring an interview + sound piece from me. a Kind of Harmony is a project by Julia E. Dyck and Amanda Harvey that looks to “transcend the physical limitations of daily life.” Each episode features “a different practitioner who uses sound as a tool or method for connection, transcendence, and healing.” All the episodes and guests are really great and I’d recommend checking it out.
I talk about my relationship to sound, disability, and about some current and upcoming projects I’m working on. You can listen to the episode here.
At the end of the episode, I read my new flash fiction “Meet the Animal Practitioners.” You can read the story below, but I wrote the story for narration specifically so would encourage you to check out the episode! If you’re short on listening time, the story comes in at about 35:25 minutes into the interview.
Meet the Animal Practitioners
There was a bed. If one were to look closely, there was a woman lying very still. She’d been there all day. Vertigo had held her bedbound. If she moved, the bare room would start spinning, her head being the horrible little axis. There were many people like her, forgotten in their beds. In the morning, Dara would go to Gateway, a ten day, all-inclusive retreat in the mountains where guests and the animal practitioners would be neurally linked. She had read about it on a cork board outside her local health club. The retreat used ancient technologies—animals. And the animals had their own ancient technology—the talent of intuition. The flier had explained intuition as the information stored and passed on through genetic memory. The Gateway treatment would allow them to train it and bring it forward to their conscious minds.
She sometimes felt the old talent in her. It took on simple missions: when she walked past the food aisle looking at the rows of produce, intuition guided her on what to make for dinner (her body reacted strongly when she passed eggplants or pineapples or most kinds of cheeses), or to pick up her pace when a shadowy figure appeared in her periphery. Dara appreciated these gentle internal nudges. But she wanted to call back to it and engage it in a deeper conversation. The talent came to Dara as a genderless voice that would guide her through the do’s and dont’s of life.
The next day, Dara stood near the opening of the Gateway barn—a large stone structure that housed the practitioners—trying to fit herself into a patch of shade. The door to the barn was shut, but the late afternoon air was filled with smells of their hot manure. It was the time of day when the birds and insects seemed a little lethargic, though Libby, the owner of the retreat, welcomed the guests energetically.
“Animals are intuitive,” Libby explained. She was an older woman. Gray hair, serious eyes. Spiritual. “People believe that animals are less important than humans in every way.”
Dara had learned about animals from a radio program she listened to, but, like most people, had never been around one.
“Animals connect directly,” Libby continued. “Without all the barriers that humans invent that get in the way of L.I.F.E.” She paused.
“Love is Finite Expressed,” a guest recited.
Dara nodded. She had her own acronym: M.U.P.S. Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms. That was her diagnosis, or lack thereof, depending on who you asked. Her health matters remained mysterious and unexplained. Like intuition, this phenomenon went back generations in her family. Something was wrong with how her body was communicating. The information seemed to spread out on the wrong channels and delivered bad messages. The messages came out as vague symptoms: swollen lymph nodes, hives, pain, sludgy exhaustion. Dara suspected many of these symptoms were from being bombarded daily with modern-day conveniences: 5G, plastics, GMOs. Conveniences that were genotoxic. She wanted to ask Libby if the treatment would help with such health anomalies or genetic pollutants, through greater communion with her genderless voice.
“Your animal will ask you to open yourself to connection. Play. Walk. Talk. Invite their council.” Libby strode over to the barn and unlatched the door. “Time to meet the animal practitioners.”
Eight horses, three dogs, two cats, and two cows stepped forward. Each animal wore a sign with their special attributes: kind, patient, strong voice, gentle demeanor, sensitive, soulful. Dara waited and watched as the other guests were chosen and linked.
This one linked with a sensitive horse.
That one linked with a patient cat.
Another one linked with a soulful dog.
A cow moved towards her. Its sign read “empathic.” Dara walked to the cow and the link was made.
End ♦