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Ever since I was a young boy, I could hear sounds in my head. The crackling of static. Drones. Pure sine waves. Dull thuds.

Over time, I came to realise that in the density of the hum, I could make out voices. Voices of my ancestors. Voices of my future. Voices of my past. Random voices. Voices without names or faces. Voices of me.

“Destroy -nothing -the most important thing.”

I felt that there was a compass in my head, and it always pointed north.

The colder the better. The air is pure. The ice clean. The sound of glaciers cracking mirrored my internal frenzy, but out there, on the tundra, I felt able to think, to attune to the landscape.

Amplification.

The sun on the ice; the frozen blood glistening like a jam-red gemstone.

The smell of carcass skins. Fat sizzling and jumping on the wood fire. Dogs howling, shaking off coats of ice. A lone black bird swooping on the horizon.

Around the camp, we have erected wind chimes made of ice. The husky wind pants as it rushes around the chimes.

In the centre of the clearing, we have dug a well, and a channel to let the meltwater drain into an underground chamber, which we have lined with thin metal strips and spikes. The top of the chamber is covered with grit and debris from the lip of the glacier, and a large ice trumpet looms out, projecting and distorting the sound of the water as it drips into the chamber and freezes.

A little distance away from the camp, we have made a large dish – it must be twenty foot in diameter – again from pure ice. The compacted ice has been polished to pure smooth perfection. In the centre of the dish is a large spike, pointing towards the sky. The spike is designed to focus the dish.

The purpose of the dish is simple, but the task is hard.

To capture the sound of the aurora.


100 million solar particles sizzle into the Earth’s atmosphere. Born in eruption on the surface of the sun, clouds of plasma travel at speeds of over a million kilometres an hour. Hooked in by the Earth’s magnetic field, they collide with our atmospheric gases. Energy is released by the collisions in the form of dancing photons; particles of light, pellets of love. Energy is delight.

The electrically charged particles excite the atmospheric gases; the excited particle is unstable and gives up its excess energy by emitting light. This is the aurora. Energy as delight.

The aurora occurs at altitudes between 80 and 500 kilometres, where there is a near-vacuum. Scientists will tell you that it is not possible for sound waves to propagate in such conditions.

I am no scientist. But I have heard the sound of the vacuum.