tim hecker - an imaginary country

"100 YEARS AGO"

open your eyes to see a ROBOT sitting on the patina-painted overbelly of a roofless train speeding through the landscape of this imaginary country. our adventure starts here.

this robot: desolate lonely but vacant sits on piles of neatly piled scrap plastic and redmetal worn from ages of endless transport. he sits with an instrument: a crackled synth with tin speakers and rotted wires. he presses keys in a planned order repeating over his elegant elegy of sanitized decay.

the train wind rain noises past the horizon

"SEA OF PULSES"

picture this:

you're in a forest, and a giant vacuum black-hole sucks up all the trees. first things to go are the dead leaves, they get swept up with a gritty subtle hiss. like broken umbrellas the limbs smack upwards, living--lingering leaves plucked like dead fruit

then, just as the trunks and debris get gone, a traffic light appears like a metal tree and it flashes lights like it shouldn't. its broken, probable. ALL of a sudden you're in the middle of a busy hi-way: car skid past you; hands on the horn. you are in the way.

but in a way the traffic wouldn't be there without you. you're in a forest, and trees know nothing of such motors and horns.

"THE INNER SHORE"

a beach of plastic granules, with crabs scrawling by claws clicking with computerized notes beeping in a hunt for ? . they scurry hurriedly as an airship overhead prepares to vertical land (engines torquing) wind howling. the cream-gray grains of poly-something mushroom up as windresistance blows a space to airland. the ship: a endless roof of metal sheets and blinking whitish strobes, freezing and unfreezing the landscape in blinky intervals, making each moment a nanophoto of occurence. it never gets to land it takes so long

"POND LIFE"

looking up from the bottom of a lagoon ears unadjusted to the pressure of liquid, the sun (:distorted from the waves above) strikes eyes with piercing notes of flashes of rays of heady blinking. a hook grabs from below and begins to tug

"BORDERLANDS"

a cathedral: ephemeral and surreal glances glances off your mindseye and impresses itself upon mechanical feelings of awe. you can tell that the chandelier inside is ageless (but built out of requirement and need not art or love) from the whole in the stained glass circular centrepiece. a shell of beauty hidden within is its core. its a factory built to withstand the ravages of monotony and industrial ugliness its creators inspired an impression of worthiness to its automated workers, hoping that worldly extravagance would somehow osmose into the oily hydraulics of robotic arms and silicate brains.

abandoned you abandon it and tank-tracks carry you over the salt flats as gusts of dust (clouds) manifest and smack amok the sides of the cathedral/factory, blowing billowing into broken windowsills and building sandy ramps at the bases of the chalky walls.

"A STOP AT THE CORD CASCADES"

waterfall of nuts and bolts, mixed with a sonic pool rippling outwards with noise. whales break the surface of the deceptively small pool, apparently from the depths of a vertical ocean extending not outwards but downwards.

you do not approach, but watch through the fear telescope. everything becomes farther away but you are safe

"UTROPICS"

zooming out from a microscope peering at a house with a light and watching it fall apart

"PARAGON POINT"

in a cave stalactite bells ring the coming of tectonic shift. an underground torrent washes through the tubes and holes. the dark dank damp walls would glisten if you had light, but you are damned to listen.

its better this way; you think

"HER BLACK HORIZON"

in the black blue of freezing water drapes of surviving light paint a sinking metal case with warmth as a sunken ship drips slowly downward.

an abyssal missile

"CURRENTS OF ELECTROSTASY"

you are in an airplaine or a zeppelin, and some genius mastermind fatherfigure is building a clock on his desk. the clock is shiny metal and the pieces are tiny small.

you watch in awe as time is made, and the hum of the engines blurs the lines of reality.


"WHERE SHADOWS MAKES SHADOWS"

ok we're back in the forest of traffic. the vacuum is screechingly going and the low horns of trucks drive past you in waves of bassy bliss.

then more cars of higher pitch join the CACOPHONY and you fall on your back as they roll overtop. they honk in a chorus, like moving manbuilt carriages driven by angels.

but the trucks dominate, you feel them careen.

you think the forest is gone by now. the wood has turned to steel and green lights atop poles are nests suggesting speed.

"200 YEARS AGO"


a return to the robot on the train with no roof. he presses the buttons on his corrugated crusted rusted synthesizer with eerie contemplation PURE CONCENTRATION and screetches of tone emit like someone let the tired cams and cogs of a busy machine scream steam in pain.

the train busily passes hiways of water causeways with ship steamers bellowing boneshaking notes warning of slow movement with inertia of a planetsized mass. the bridges are needlessly high and the robot looks from the keyboard and see seegulls flying under neath the bridge, between the rusted tracks of trainroad and waves of whitishwater salty but tasteless.

fade to white

---bushn