EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALMarch 3, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
Cat Calls
Come to Seville and experience the miracle of nature.
Like I said, breathing in the alley is the art of a sound engineer.
This particular noise, at first, in the dark, is the sweet emissions of a fussing baby. An
in-the-throat wail, with dynamics, distant and muffled. It grows. Now someone is dying.
Someone is suffering a slow, torturous death in the alley. It’s the Spanish
Inquisition, piercing.
Suddenly, the sound reveals its source. Feline. Somewhere in the
narrative there vociferates a meow. She starts with the infant’s complaint.
Her screech intensifies and takes on a rough, raspy and enduring monotone. Volume swells
and the amphitheater reverberates its Primadonna. She is the star of our all-night chamber
music.
The sound of mating cats takes on the fortitude of a marching band in
Seville, where the walls amplify a limp and the nights are a mysterious cavern of darkness
and density. These cat-nights have obscured the scuffle of the midnight stroller, the
singing bum, the street cleaners with their fire hoses and the one-man-band of a garbage
truck. When the amorous nocturnal fervor begins, the ears of the city strain to identify
for absolute certainty that someone is not trapped beneath a cement truck, and then
resolve to endure the proficient interlude until dawn.
