Universal Ear

02/03/2023

12/01/2022

🎥Chapter 33🎥
"Gratitude 2.0"
🎧VIRTUAL BANTER🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“Before I left, Morelle managed to get her theme park switched back on, and she hurried me to the gift shop lest Santiago should whisk me away before I completed my contractual obligation to purchase a Bubble. True to her promise, my guide had arranged a snow globe representation of my experiences in Bourges: in it, dozens of tiny holographic Harley Byrne’s took a Möbiusean tour through the impossibly compressed alternative realities of the city. I did not study it too closely, not because I was afraid to see where my hallucinatory experiences had actually taken me, but because my work is not about me.
The gift shop merchant pressed me for payment, but I found that my remaining golden hearts had turned rotten in my pocket during my extended stay with Mrs. Coeur. Checking the pouches of my utility belt for an alternative currency, my fingers alighted on the bee faeces that I had collected early in my journey. The turds glittered still, and should have more than covered the bill for my souvenir, but the vendor turned his nose up.
‘I can’t accept that, he scoffed,’ as I passed him the sandwich bag. ‘It’s the property of the city – and besides, as an artefact from the city’s meta-history your… precious matter… would cause a paradox if introduced into the global economy of gift shops.’
‘Nonsense,’ I argued: ‘Museum shops are not historical ‘Duty-Free' zones through which time does not pass.’”

06/01/2022

🎥Chapter 28🎥
"The Pulled Plug"
🎧VIRTUAL-ACOUSTIC AMBIENCES🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“When I came to, Morelle was dabbing pointlessly at my brow with a holographic sponge. She smelled of ammonia, lavender, and a placeless scent I would later discover to have been ground unicorn horn. Although the odour was holographic, it had the effect of smelling salts, and I felt my senses recalibrate to their pre-Bourges condition. The unmediated taste of my unwashed mouth returned, and my sense of awe at humanity’s collective achievements dishevelled into a vague idea about how coincidence had been the primary curse and blessing of our wretched species and how we could have achieved a lot more if only breakfast, rather than evening tea, had been the dominant meal of history’s ‘doer’ cultures.
‘I received a medical alert,’ explained Morelle. ‘What happened here? You were babbling like a lunatic when I arrived.’
I tried to retrace my last memories.
‘My life’s work... up in smoke. And then I was the smoke. And I was sad.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Mrs. Coeur. ‘You couldn’t handle a little empathy?’
‘Ah, you’ve been through an empathy experience,’ said Morelle. ‘And you couldn’t handle it. This’ll be a case of ‘rubber empathy syndrome’ – when a user mistakes the emotions that he is empathizing for his own, he can become disassociated from his own emotions, which start to wither.’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ came a small voice. ‘But would you mind keeping the noise down? I’m trying to create a mental field recording!’
‘We *are* the field, buster,’ Mrs. Coeur spat back at the stranger. ‘You can’t whitewash us from your archive.’”

05/01/2022

🎥Chapter 27🎥
"You’re Smoke"
🎧BITCRUSHED WAILS🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“I felt my smugness burn itself out; now I was looking down on the cathedral from above, and it was awful.
‘What’s going on?’ I choked. ‘How did I get here?’
‘Now we are the smoke that rises from the burning cathedral,’ came the reply. It was impossible to nail Mrs. Coeur to a specific wisp among the chaos. ‘How you feeling now, chuck?’
‘I’m sad because the flames will soon die.’
‘No, no, no,’ she coughed. ‘It’s the mutability of fire that lends her her beauty!’
‘This is terrible! I’m disintegrating into the atmosphere! Everything is temporary! Where are the back-ups?’
‘Oh yeah, I get it,’ she said. ‘It’s all fun and games when you’re fire. The thought that our heritage might live on as airborne particles is somehow offensive to you.’
I wanted to assure her otherwise but, unbeknownst to me, something unprecedented was happening: I was losing my mind.
Scraps of dialogue and unclassifiable vocal utterances were later found on the Universal Ear’s hard drive, indicating that I had repeatedly jammed the record-button on and off as my suffering hastened. Whilst I have not, at the time of writing, had the chance to listen back to those particular recordings – my brother immediately confiscated them and claims to be working on translating the ‘inhuman gusts’ back into standard English – Santiago assures me it’s hard-hitting stuff.”

04/01/2022

The latest episode of UNIVERSAL EAR is being serialized on Instagram - and the latest episode of that episode is the hottest yet. Follow us as we edge towards a climax in virtual reality or, worse, real reality.

04/01/2022

🎥Chapter 26🎥
"Flaming Empathy"
🎧HEAR HOW FIRE FEELS🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“For now, I was on fire. The experience of inhabiting the emotions and sensations of the flaming organ drew my attention away from the visitor’s pamphlet and my thoughts.
I sensed that the next organ pipe along from me was being ‘experienced' by Mrs. Coeur.
‘Is that you, Big Hat?’ I parped, using the handle that I had assigned her in a moment of gaiety.
‘How are you enjoying the empathy experience, Tiny Shorts?’ the organ pipe replied, in a breathy tone that was unmistakably that of Mrs. Coeur (her use of the nickname that she had assigned me against my protestations – my shorts fit me very efficiently – confirmed her identity.)
‘I’m very uncomfortable,’ I informed her. ‘My lungs are being seared. The pain is almost unbearable. I also feel humiliation. The very air with which I, a noble organ pipe, used to sing, is now fuelling my own demise; I am performing my own dirge, yet my voice has become feeble.’
‘Ok, calm down.’
‘I don’t see what this has to do with heritage!’ I yelled, pipeily. I thought I saw Mrs. Coeur's pipe shrug.
‘That’s the pipe talking. Careful not to get sucked in – these empathy experiences can be real parasites. Let’s go.’
With a wiggle of her pipey hips, my sense of organness flushed from my system, and I found myself dancing wildly, obsessed with a desire to grow and to consume.
‘Now we are the fire that is burning the cathedral!’ sparked a nearby flame. ‘How are you enjoying this empathy experience?’
‘I’m still awfully hot,’ I told her. ‘But quite smug with it.’
Mrs. Coeur was really getting it on.
‘Let’s burn everything!’ I suggested. ‘I want to burn it all!’”

21/12/2021

🎥Chapter 25🎥
"Escape from a Frying Pan"
🎧SIZZLING SYNTHESIZERS🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“Mrs. Coeur drew my attention to the existence of Easter Eggs she had scattered around her virtual curse. Almost always, these digital surprises came in the form of metastitial empathy experiences. I shall proceed, now, directly to the sequence of nested empathy experiences that so nearly proved my undoing.
…I instantaneously assumed the form of an organ pipe as it perished in perpetuity in a replica of the burning cathedral exhibition beyond the metastice.
The cathedral’s original stone walls had resisted Bourges’ greatest fire, the Madeleine of 1487, which inferno - some say - marked the beginning of Bourges’ decline (although this decline would level out some centuries later before resuming a steep downward tumble around the middle of the 22nd century, as we have observed). But in 1552, the church organ would melt in the fire of the Golden Helm, the smoke and hot air blasting notes of shrill panic from the liquefying pipes in an act of devastating calliopoid ingenuity, and in 1559 the catastrophe happened all over again.
When History® came along and gave a voice to those pathetic organs with its interlacing fire effect, whereby representations of the latter two 16th-century cathedral fires alternated at a speed that created a kind of tertiary flicker to that of the flaming visuals, it only formalized the subliminal dread that Berruyers had lived with for half a millennium. For first-time visitors, such as myself, but particularly those of weaker mettle, the sonic effect was more profound.
I would need to return and record these unholy organs at a later date.”

19/12/2021

🎥Chapter 23🎥
"The Polyauthentic Spouse"
🎧UNRELIABLE FOLEY🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“’- Then it’s true that you’re a real woman, and not a heritage object like the saints and the unicorns and – your husband out there?’ I gestured as specifically as I could to the mechanical Jacques Coeur ‘Echo’ in the world beyond the metastice.
‘I identify as polyauthentic.’
‘But you can’t be happy here,’ I urged her. ‘This is a fragment of a life. Nobody remembers you and these metastices are claustrophobic. You have a beautiful hat. Such a big hat for such a narrow dimension. Really, it’s an astonishing old hat. A hennin, I suppose you’d call it. It’s what we would call, in my time, a ‘whopper.’ And your eyes…’ I continued, unsure whether it was the metastice or those eyes that made the space so tight ‘- well, I just feel like you’re cramped in here. Take me to Ursinus, and I’ll rescue the lot of us from this cursed metastice. My brother will be waiting for me.’
‘Harley Byrne, you brave fool,’ she replied. ‘Don't you see that even if there were a way out of here, your brother and everyone else would already have forgotten you and all of the songs you’ve recorded? That’s half the point of the curse.’
I tried to blink, but it was impossible. I was a prisoner of the metastice.
Evidently the shock of losing my life’s work left me looking rather startled.
‘A closed mouth catches no flies,’ said Mrs. Coeur, prodding my jaw back to its default position. ‘That was one of my husband's mottoes. He was obsessed with mottoes. Had them carved everywhere. One motto each, that's my motto. Let's go, Babes, there's someone you should meet.’”

#

16/12/2021

🎥Chapter 22🎥
"The Fabric of the Forgotten"
🎧METASTITIAL WHISPERS🎧

ℹ️ Link in bio ℹ️

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum on INSTAGRAM () in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“‘But how-?’ I sputtered.
‘How did a girl like me end up in a museum experience like this?’ she purred. ‘It’s very simple: when my husband paid for zis house to be built, he was too busy playing banker to oversee the details. I, meanwhile, had plenty of time to design ze fixtures and fittings. I also had time to play with Jacques’ alchemic apparatus and esoteric thingamijigs. Long and lonely were the nights I toiled in search of ze Philosopher’s Stone, for I had not even the company of books to reflect my thoughts. My fingertips burned and chapped with overuse at the font of infinite enlightenment’ – here I thought I saw her wink – ‘and my posture began to suffer also, for I was hunched over a desk in low light for many hours at a time and ze science of yoga had not yet reached ze city of Bourges.’
She continued:
‘Finally, I learned the secret of immortality but’ – and here she blushed, attractively – ‘being a woman and prone to idle chit-chat, I shared the secret with my maid, who tittle-tattled to my husband’s spies. My fate was sealed. It is written that “whoever reveals the secret of the Great Work is cursed and dies of apoplexy.” Well, I was already immortal by now so being cursed to death created a kind of alchemic paradox, with the result that I was instead cursed to live forever in the metastices of the city; and any man who hears the tale of how I, a mere lady, was the true alchemist in the Coeur household, will be immediately cursed to exist forever alongside me in the fabric of the forgotten.’”

11/12/2021

Tiny episodettes from THE CURSE OF THE PHANTOM TYMPANUM keep getting on the UNIVERSAL EAR Instagram profile.

22/11/2021

🎥Chapter 04🎥 🎧SOUND ON🎧

"Title Sequence of DOOM"

Serializing UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in episodes of several astonishing seconds at a time!

EXTRACT FROM THE SOURCE MEMOIRS:
“Harley Byrne works in Manchester, 2012 A.D. for the UNIVERSAL EAR DIGICORP, a record company for whom he has pledged to record and make available for download “all the world’s , ever.”
His ongoing mission has seen him cross the length and breadth of the Earth, travelling through time with his shed-built Universal Ear and frequently battling wits with his arch-enemy, Being, mysterious mistress of .”

14/11/2021

With the reopening of venues, a backlog of unfulfilled UNIVERSAL EAR bookings is unleashed. To be precise, two (2) screenings of the latest episode, The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum, will take place next weekend. One in Istanbul, Turkey, and the other in Marseille, France. TURKEY!! EVENT: UNIVERSAL...