Drones will save the world

Bees drone. They make honey, fly, pollinate, dance, throw up, fuck, sting and drone. We discovered the drone thanks to them, and with them, movement has always been part of the drone. Then we invented air conditioning and the drone stopped moving. To restore the balance and bring movement back, we had to invent mechanical drones as well, and use them to kill people. Flies drone too, but nobody cares because flies aren’t cool.

The words used to describe the drone are mystical: “transcendent”, “hypnotic”, “ecstatic”, “tantric”. The drone is anti-mystical: it is entirely visible, always, across its whole extent. It hides nothing from you, it promises nothing concealed behind the curtain. The drone doesn’t resolve.

I’m sitting at my desk eating crackers and cheese slices, listening to Tim Hecker’s “Harmony in Ultraviolet”. It’s Friday morning, I’m on a month of unpaid leave, I’m thinking about drone music and I love it.

Micro-movements of the facial muscles, the tone of a voice, the pauses between one word and the next, the tension in the shoulders, the direction of a gaze. This is drone. Being invited over to look at someone’s holiday photos is also drone.

There is a point in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where, under favourable conditions, you can hear the beating between the 60Hz of the entire American power grid and the 50Hz of the entire European one. A slight turn of the head is enough to make it disappear.

Every time I listen to Éliane Radigue’s Trilogie de la Mort I’m moved to the point of tears.

I started training myself to love the drone during the endless summer afternoons of my childhood, when the only things to do were long bike rides or reading comics. The sound of the pedals, of the tyres on the asphalt, of the wind in my ears, trained me for sound. Reading trained me for attention.

At some point you realise the key has changed, but you don’t know when it happened. In fact it never happened, or at least it didn’t happen in a single moment. Like the end of summer.

The drone as a gateway. The drone as a key to reading. The drone as unsafe space. The drone as a non-commercial break. The drone as an act of rebellion. The drone as getting lost in the noise of the signal. The drone as camouflage technology. The drone as the national anthem of a non-place. The drone as an obscenity in the field of analytic geometry. The drone as taking the stairs to the astral plane. The drone as portable apocalypse. The drone as osmotic music. The drone as not knowing exactly what the drone is. The drone as a dream in which you have very big ears and very small hands. The drone as “and everything else, too”. The drone as smuggled narrative. The drone as being a bit off, forever.