streamlined reflections, courtesy of noise canceling headphones

A monumental event of both self and communal preservation, the initial months of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown were also an unprecedented auditory event. News broadcasts, sirens, coughing spells, birds, whispers, the telephone ringing—louder than ever before. The lack of traffic, neighbors chatting or fighting or crying through the wall, applause in the middle of the day, strangers moaning on voice chat apps, fireworks, protest slogans, police scanners, megaphones, and, perhaps when the screen became too exhausting, the reliable lull of the radio.

At the onset of New York City’s lockdown, officially declared on March 16th, 2020, I worked as an arts admin and moonlighted as a radio show co-host. The show, which was previously recorded and transmitted live, became remote. I began recording life around me. I began recording my dreams and phone calls with family and friends. I sent voice memos when my eyes were too tired to keep texting. I learned some barebones audio editing on Youtube and ripped audio from anywhere I could get it. I came into possession of a strange, happenstance polyphonic archive. I conducted spontaneous oral histories. My singing improved.

Accessibility became every organization's cornerstone. Live captioning and sign language interpretation became routine for remote programming—undeniable proof that lockdown was, amongst other things, experienced as a unique auditory event. Listening, however one might define or experience the act of giving attention to sound and its making, became a concern at the forefront of the ongoing cultural crisis. But as time went on and “normal” returned, these accessibility measures waned, vanishing almost entirely from what had become robust, inclusive remote programming. Those of us who were left, at least those of us who could, went back outside. The day was loud and everything was at our fingertips once more. Who cared about those distanced, overly-cautious sick people still stuck in the house?

Radio signals are indiscriminate, once transmitted they are everywhere. The listener can go anywhere, can be anywhere in the world, can move across time. Deli Radio, a project founded by June Canedo de Souza and Daniel Santos, worked to foster connection and shared experience both in-person and remotely, combining a live broadcast and programming space with a functioning deli at Recess. I no longer live in New York City and did not have a chance to visit Deli Radio in person. And yet I was present within it: making dinner, cleaning the kitchen, dancing in the mirror, walking through subtropical climates foreign to Brooklyn. All I had to do was press play.

The following poem, streamlined reflections, courtesy of noise canceling headphones, was written stream of consciousness while listening exclusively to the Deli Radio archive.

3,000+ miles from anyone I might call friend or family or foe deep cleaning the kitchen in silence feeding a paranoia that thrives on quietude & isolation but that keeps me alive nonetheless

outside is not loud enough today is a day for birds: cloudless, shrill in the barest sense, interrupted only by the turbulence of thought, an internal sonority that mouths frustration suffering the spirit from behind a wall of fascial plexiglass soring the body from the inside out

in bed skimming the police scanner for threat texting the group chat the names of intersections to avoid being bottlenecked by hounds & pigs on bikes that long month every sound carried the clink of chains & static lag echoed throughout

I don’t miss the party per se but the piercing clarity that came afterwards pissing in the alley or staring past the reflection in the bathroom’s busted mirror, the buzzing warmth carried home that shielded me from anxious dreams the knotted intention above us conspiring toward what?

in the shower startled by the voices of people I once knew intimately coming out of the radio invites a realization: there is no such thing as closure only sudden arrest & paced dysregulation then the phantom appendage of peace floating near the body but seldom within

throat dry from 4 hr phones calls and crying appalled at the lengths stupidity will go for the sake of performance: look outside: its bitches hanging from the windows applauding victims of the state because they have nothing better to do than make false affirmation of life by trivializing pointless and avoidable death as heroic

toying around in Audacity splicing Janye Cortez interviews with the singing jar of bells I made and recorded at 3am on my phone & a random voice memo of myself recounting a dream to a friend entitled: dreamland ramble 11/10/20 wherein I am looking for a map of a fictional country

a year from now everyone will seemingly forget the haunt of the ambulance morgue & the distance kept & the distance couldn’t

Five years after the initial global lockdown, life has taken on some kind of rote and superficial normality. The store is open, friends are coming over for dinner, and funerals are once again well attended in flesh. Communion and commingling draw us back together and with it a new assessment of risk. I would be lying if I said the pandemic did not leave me with gaping wounds: a deeper distrust of the American government and those aligned with its capital driven infrastructures of carelessness and death; and a smarting (and smarter) anxiety toward crowded space and who is or isn’t present within. Isolation, of varying degrees, continues to shape our capacity for safety in relation.

Deli Radio addresses this in its scale, design and invitation, giving agency to listeners, participants, and neighbors on just how close they want to get. Intimately mundane in nature, delis are transitory depots of sustenance, conversation, and ambient togetherness. They are places frequented by and extended to all, whether in patronage or a thoughtless commute. Deli Radio was a space that celebrated the radical actions and sonorities of artists, farmers, music lovers, queer historians, activists, mothers and more. Come in, pass by, grab what you need, linger if you want, dance, or don’t. Login, fastforward, rewind, send it to a friend and listen together. It was as interpersonal as you allowed it, your hunger or curiosity, your desire to be amongst was more than enough for your participation.