I was on what appeared to be a Homecoming trip with Priss and Colin. Priss had been driving us around and we had now returned to wherever we are staying. It seems too fancy and homelike to be a hotel, but I can't quite figure out what it was supposed to be.
Colin and I were sharing a room, and he was just coming out of the shower (in the bathroom attached to the bedroom). I was sitting on or up against the footboard of the bed (actually, my back was up against a very thick column, wider than my body), near the bathroom door, and glancing away for good measure, in case Colin were to come out naked. When he stepped into the bedroom, he jerked back in surprise, but he was wearing a towel.
I then found a wooden box in the room, maybe the size of a breadbox, made of light blond, unpolished wood, and unadorned except for four or five lengthwise rows of nails embedded in the top. If you flick one of the nails, it somehow causes the box to resonate the sound of a voice singing a syllable of a word from a song, plus one piece of percussion -- as if the part of the box below that nail were shaped in such a perfect way as to reshape the sound of the flick into this complex sound.
I started with the last row, in which the words were accompanied by a closed hi-hat cymbal. The song it was playing sounded like a version of Mad Tom of Bedlam sung by Jolie Holland. I went and started at the first row, flicking each nail in the right rhythm, and listening to the song.
This box had to be really old, I thought, and the sounds coming from it were produced in some super-complex organic process without the benefit digital recording and reproduction. I wonder if this art had been lost to time. In any case, I'm keeping this.
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