An Introduction

Sound collage by Nadia Botello

A long time ago, sensing a great upheaval was at hand, we stepped outside and took a few measurements. These would help tidy our confusion. We used only degrees of height and dispersal: how high the stars, how scattered the children. And armed with these dimensions, we tried to defend our there and then-ness.

But dimensions, it so happened, are subject to limits. No god was threatened. Our babies were still toothless and exposed. We had to do something about our position relative to earth and sky. The foreman’s instructions were simple: Let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. Let us make brick upon brick upon brick. And from our tower, he shouted, we will look back over many small and aging replicas to that thin territory of origins, and catch our breath at the destruction. We’ll exceed measure and forget we ever needed brick in the first place. We were all appetite and no intestine, a craving without store, and that’s why the first tools were disposable.

But that was long ago, and early. Down in the skyless ruins we became craftsmen. Anticipating life with useful, outlasting things. Each tool was stamped with a year and a few significant letters; made to be a silent, surviving witness to its own event. Haven’t we watched a knife shrink? Tool by tool, the long history of human desire is serialized.

Was it a need or an ache that gave us the hammer? And how long before it’s satisfied? When undressing a plastic straw with your teeth, which is more interesting to consider: its purpose, or its duration on Earth? What about its abundance; its far-and-wideness? And which is more intimate: the comb or the plow?

But a tool can’t feel. It has no imagination. No focus, gaze or intent. It cannot guess what you are thinking; It cannot think. You will never roll over, open your eyes, and catch it watching you as you sleep.

A tool is nothing if not deaf. It has one answer and no questions. It translates the world into strikes and blows; shavings and dust; a language bent or bowed. It resonates only as far as the fingers–a simple fluency that softens, like any word, with every iteration. The blade stutters; the edge rounds; the hinge acquires a darker tone. Tool by tool, and so on.