There is a guitarist in the student flat next to ours who noodles every day for hours at a time. This morning, Angelica and I are eating breakfast in the side room and can hear next door a guy and girl clearly chatting in the shower together, all bubbly and happy, and some noodling guitar drifting through the air too. At one point, the lady is talking loud enough that we can hear the full conversation in our room, and she’s talking about how someone is complaining that they can’t get a girlfriend, and it’s not about the women, he could have a girlfriend if he really wanted one and as she’s saying this the guitar gets so loud, moving from finger picking to a continual angry strum, a hot jazz lick becoming a violent droning strum. I know nothing of my neighbours, but feel like I got all the details...a dynamic and emotion that felt entirely clear because I’ve heard and experienced variations of it so many times before. I could understand my neighbours in pure sonics, like being able to distinguish happy chatter and calls of warning in a tree full of birds.