Sounds run leaps down into the canyon: a dog barking; a pickup truck changing gears; hollow report
from a sniper's rifle in Afghanistan; swish of a sword slicing through a neck in Iraq; a faceless missile
aimed from a
trailer parked
in Nevada, exploding a body in the Middle East; a soldier's brain compressed into dust, from the blast
of a roadside bomb. Bird's singing, woodpecker's thumping a Cagean composition on a tree, "the out-
come of which is unknown."

Is it
sound?
Then
again, is
it music?

Walk the same streets year after year, and hear: "How are you?" "Good. How are you?"
Peripheral to cities, regions as centers are "a new kind of life," globally connected and
scored by rumors of war.