Ambient room noise is just the computers hissing at us with quiet piano from my headphones down the line. We are clackers, typing, sleepy, sniffling, dutifully moving from one record to the next. It’s hard to care about anything that’s in front of you at a quarter to three on Friday, even harder when you’re busy caring about anything else. There is only one voice inside here (tangled in the ivory piano threads), though in the hallway the construction crew are chatterattertattering about vans and pounds and heavy things.

I seem to have lost my voice – not in the traditional sense. I can speak. However, i cannot seem to sing. Every time i move past my safest three notes tucked into the lower middle of the treble staff it’s as if my throat is collapsing upon itself so as to resist anything that could be construed as a beautiful noise coming out. I am shackled to my tinny falsetto… sounds like all of our bad dance classics records singing out from the tiny headphones connected to their turntables, but i could only wish for that tactile needle-noise in the back of my throat. Instead i get a dull and angry throb that i have learned to almost taste.

The quiet piano has given way entirely to a wondering vocal: love you, love you not? I was up and out at eight in the morning today, and my eyes shot the world through a different speed of film than i’m used to. How can they let in so much light?