School Of Emotional Engineering
School Of Emotional Engineering

There's the Night, hooded, sitting in the center of the darkness, at the piano. It grins, says I was expecting you, strikes a couple of keys, invites me into the space that remains beside it, I move closer. I'm by its side now, what do you want me to listen to, Night?

This keyboard confuses me; I can't see the edges of the keys. You start, I'm here listening to you. Now there are ten pieces of bone, cold as porcelain, brushing against the white and black tiles, and a face bowed over the keyboard swaying back and forth weightlessly to the melody. It's not my fault, Night. I tried to fix the metronome of days, but something got stuck, like a pebble amidst sand dust in an hourglass. I needed to come back here to listen to you play. They call it reason, after all. What are you doing, Night, laughing? I'm serious. It's not visible, but I'm scared, even now that the cold enters through the echoes, like drafts from a window.

I was on my way home when I stopped at the College of Emotional Engineering. There were five of them at the door, one came forward, smiles and shakes my hand. Ben Frost, he says. I'm still here for a bit with Daniel Rejmer, Sean Albers, Andrew Hazel, Russell Fawcus, what about you, are you staying?

He tells me that he fled from Australia to Iceland, to make strange music, mixing ambient and electronic sounds. That's already enough of a story, he whistles a little tune (it's the same as the Night's!) and I let myself go, closing my eyes again. I wonder who this Sylvia is and if she left with you as well. Strange land, Iceland, you chose well, and how much it resembles this music, resting on a cold minimalism, where everything is measured, able to cradle you without ever going too far. The possibility of finding a place as a refuge, when feeling lost, or alone, far away for barely an hour in a land where fire and ice coexist.

Now I remember what I had to say, but I open my eyes and the Night is gone.