Before Anyone Is Seen

Before anyone is seen, footsteps are heard.

When scattered, it is only a few people walking over. Soles scrape against the ground, some early, some late, like several lines each going their own way. Once they fall into the same beat, sound grows height, shoulders, and muscle for them. The footsteps have not become heavier, but before the corner, the listener has already combined them into a larger body. Those few people may still be laughing and talking, or may simply have happened to walk in step for a few paces; sound has already arrived on their behalf.

A shared sound often arrives a step early in this way. It does not hurry to wait for people to think clearly; it first places the next beat in front of them. Standing inside a crowd, this can sometimes feel like a kind of easing. The voices beside you will catch you; going off course is less conspicuous, and being a little slow will not be heard at once. To say it is “like borrowing someone else’s lungs” is not wrong, only too slight; what is borrowed also includes rhythm, breath changes, and the timing of stopping. What you receive is not only a greater volume, but a whole system of breathing already in motion.

Short phrases that return again and again leave time in very fine increments. If you miss the first half of a line, you can still chase your way into the last two words; before the meaning has stood firm, the throat has already found where to land. The person beside you does not turn back, nor urge you on; it is simply that the next beat has come again. That beat is not harsh, and even seems well-intentioned: it places the latecomer inside the sound too. Yet precisely because of this, hesitation is hard to leave on its own. A person can miss the beginning and still catch the tail; they can also have just begun to want to stop, only to find that others have already sung on to the next place. In time and too late are sometimes only half a beat apart.

What stays longer in the ear is the person half a beat slow. He has just drawn in that breath, while the people beside him have already sung the next word; if he opens his mouth now, he will collide with someone else’s final note. So he closes his mouth. That moment of quiet is clearer than before.