Mr.Ultrafino – My time with Darryl Baalki

Ever since Darryl and I begun our walks, the topics of conversations shifted. Gone were the endless dissections of records, samples and breakbeats. Our thoughts were suddenly occupied with the music we could hear in nature. Darryl could talk for hours about the different rhythms she could feel in the swaying of trees, about harmonies hidden in the silent hum of the forest, melodies the wind played as it blew through the ragged rocks. Sometimes, in the high summer when the ancient forests were full of birds singing, and buzzing with bees and the trees were crackling in the heat, I was almost worried there was too much for her to take in. “How do you decide what to listen to? Which pattern out of those hundreds and thousands around you is the right one?” I asked her once. “We should never look for the brightest light, nor should we try to sing the loudest sound,” she replied after a while. “We should instead try to experience the moment of perfect stillness between two flaps of a bird’s wings; hear that utter silence between lightning and thunder. That is the time when the universe reveals its deepest secrets and even the impossible will blossom, like a flower out of a stone.”