[1]

Apocryphal, perhaps. Nikola Tesla is operating a steam driven oscillator in his town house laboratory at 46 Houston Street.

He is trying to resonate an object, much like an opera singer trying to break a glass with their voice.

No matter how hard he tries, how much he increases the amplitude, the object refuses to respond. Tesla is having no success. Silence, unmoving, until one of his laboratory assistants rushes into the room and smashes the oscillator with a large hammer.

Nikola Tesla found he was incapable of resonating with the object in his laboratory, but adept at shaking the rest of the street so hard that people believed they were experiencing an earthquake.

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[2]

Multiplicity.
A surgeon/shaman/butcher in black.
Face covered.
An altar/slab/operating table of cinder block doused in shadow and light.
Instruments laid out… drill, crowbar, knife.
Medicine/offering/drugs/food/blood/semen.
And the patient/subject/god/rock.
The low steady beat of electronic instruments like broken heart beat monitors, chanting pulse.
An exorcism/extraction.
Baptism with water/electricity.
Divination by AM/FM.
Unmoved. Uncooperative.
A drill burns motor. Holy spirit, smoking plastic inhaled deeply.
Soothing loudness, aggressive silence.
Stubborn patient.
Another exorcism/extraction.
Daylight. Nature.
A return, a rewind.
A gift.
An understanding.
An attempt to extract the void from the stone.
Failed.
An attempt to extract the stone from the void.
Success.

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[3]

“I AM NOTHING
NOTHING IS WHAT I DO
THE SIMPLEST THING
IS NOTHING
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE
NOTHING” – Vela Oma

This article first appeared in Incident Magazine, 31.07.2017