The quietest room in my flat is my bedroom; a small room at the end of the hall, filled - say two-thirds up - with, like, the second cheapest bed Ikea sold ten years ago, whatever that's called.

I set the recorder going before shutting the door and then sat on the edge of the bed whilst Alex lay reading. It was nigh-on silent, to the point that i thought about how bad my tinnitus could be said to be, and whether even that's what i could *hear*. I thought about the warm comfort of the room i was in and how it can be assumed to contrast with wherever Bassel Khartabil is obliged to remain. I thought about what to do with this silence which is as good as any afforded by my relatively cheap recorder. I thought about how it wasn't that great a silence; remembered the pleasing, amusing list of silent records in Craig Dworkin's No Medium; i even did my best to be blank, to think nothing, to do something like contemplate what it's like to be held prisoner...

To make the actual track i looped and tweaked various sections - the tens seconds immediately following the door's closing is repeated adn you can hear a dull click which is probably the door or possibly a button on my jeans hitting the edge of the bed repeated through much of the track; i slowed a section of the ten seconds down and these two percussive events begin to suggest something like a clock or clocks. Other sections of more pure silence were stretched and dragged and panned and sort of... suggest their presence in either left or right channel at various points in the track.

It's a clumsy, cheap and over-worked 'silence' and i can't imagine it truly soothing but it is also is an accurate picture of my inarticulacy in the face of the wider world and a literally mute but otherwise earnest plea for freedom for everybody held unjustly and against their will and wish for something peacable and calm in the hearts of everybody everywhere.

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

a number of the same quiet room [disquiet0167-freebassel]

C H E A P  C O N C R E T E  |  C O N T R I V E D  G L I T C H E S™ | C O N T EN T  S O L U T I O N S

rustbelt sonics.

https://radiofreeul-quoma.bandcamp.com/releases

a number of the same quiet room [disquiet0167-freebassel]

jmmy kpple