Nathan Gray

Catalogue of sounds

The sound of an 80’s red Tarago van’s side door sliding back.

The sound of breathing


Knuckles cracking


Stomach grumbling


The sound of embarrassment

The sound you can hear in your head when you scratch your scalp

Not a vibration in air


But a vibration in the bones of your skull

I was scratching my head once


And mistook the sound


for the sound of water falling onto concrete


As my Dad sprayed the driveway


The sound seemed too close


And it disturbed me

The sound of breathing (again)


The sound of fidgeting from someone


who has had a song stuck in their head for days


The sound of aging

Those sounds you hear from nowhere


that are not tinnitus


but rise and fall in volume


so high pitched they almost hurt


And then


the actual sound of tinnitus

The sound of someone bitching about you


Across town or across the world

The sound of real babies


not the sounds invented by advertising

The sound of a glass of fizzy water fizzing

The sound of extinction

Birds

Sex sounds



from the body not the voice

My mother snoring five minutes into any film

The van door again


It’s the family car from my teens


The sound of heat


More a silence really


while everything rests in the shade

The sound of the keyboard as I write to my father


Who has been ignoring my emails for almost a year now

The neighbours talking


The more German I know


The less I can tune them out

The sound of my feet crackling


As I wriggle them trying to keep them warm


Too lazy to put on socks

That’s all for now I think

Except for


The whirring sound


of saving a word file


When you put your ear up close


To your laptop

Documentation