O THROAT! O TREMBLING THROAT!

One throws their head back, as the other reaches for the climactic high note, but no sound comes out of the first. Both mouths are open, both heads are back, both sets of eyes are closed, one of the voices is all we can hear. Both are indistinguishable. 

One lip sync’s to the voice of the other, repeatedly. 

They both lip sync to the recordings of their own voices that eventually cremate into the resonant frequencies of the room. 

They both lip-sync to the voice of the corpse. 

                                                                                                                                                       “Listening Speaks”   Barthes

They are both open and closed together 

at the same time.

Passed back and forth

Looped records of both 

till 

neither throat is only open

neither throat is only closed 

and

both are open                                                                                                                               “The Throat also Listens”

both are closed.                                                                                                                                                                    Kostenbaum                                          

"The subtext of Traviata reminds us that pleasure will kill Violetta as surely as, in homophobic scenarios of AIDS, it has killed gays”

              Is it a certainty? Am I doomed to die? Is this what history is telling us?

The twin thugs of Death and Silence.

 I learn of myself backwards – I understand myself in relation to the past behind me in order to look forward into my future. 

When I listen to a recording, I move backward in time to an imagined day of recording.