-
Soundscapes: Word Treasure
By Erin Calabria I am fifteen, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my bedroom with a book of poems in my hands. Because I am fifteen, I don’t talk to anyone. I spend much of my time alone in this room, but then again, I am not really there either. Instead, I am traveling between…
-
Soundscapes: Music Practice
By Erin Calabria I can’t talk about music without talking about silence. During high school, when I began composing on the piano, I didn’t tell my teacher. This music wasn’t like anything I’d ever been assigned, the fingerings were meant to fit rather than strain my small hands, and everything was by ear. This music…
-
Soundscapes: Abiding with Birds
By Erin Calabria It is a clear, mild day in October, my first time home in nearly three years. All the leaves are glowing, suspended in translucent tiers of colored light, just on the brink of letting go. My brother turns off the road, parks, then leads the way into the woods. Almost as soon…
-
Soundscapes: Radio Lessons
by Erin Calabria The first time I heard the world through a field recorder, it was like falling into a parallel dimension. Here was another universe rubbing shoulders with ours, where everything looked the same but sounded completely different. Ears cocooned in heavy foam headphones, I slowly rotated the levels to pull this alternate reality…
-
Soundscapes: Story as a Place to Dwell
by Erin Calabria It is a grey afternoon in Germany. It is almost always a grey afternoon in Germany, and my ears are buried in headphones, as they so often are these days, because there is nowhere to go right now, and no way to get there. So instead, I’m scrolling through voice memos, teleporting…
-
Lampyridae
Fiction by Erin Calabria Did you know, I begin, though I can’t be sure I’ve reached you: you, hunched over headlines that must be read twice. Morning sun stitching the grey in your hair, frail and fine as threads of spider silk. And maybe if I’d fallen in love with someone else, they would tell…