The Hearing Test: A Novel

She had realized that at the end of the day, life was made for pleasure and most people chose to deny themselves this because they didn’t know that they were free.

In the following weeks, apathy became a kind of tranquility. A holiday from impulse. The barrenness of my daily landscape made distant things feel recent.

She said that it is when we shift our attention to the frame that we are reminded of the frame’s purpose—to exclude, to make an inside and outside. At the same time, he was running away from the preexisting frame, she said. The attempt to escape the frame only leads to the expansion of the frame.

She said that John said silence is nothing but the things we choose to ignore and exclude, and that he left empty space in the music so he could show the listener that it was not actually empty, just subject to the whims of chance.

She said that coincidence was a religion and that she was agnostic.

“When no cause can be discovered for events such as floods, drouts, frosts or even in politics, then the cause of these events may be fairly attributed to luck.” I wondered about this adverb, fairly.

I thought about making something of nothing. I thought about making nothing of nothing. And finally, nothing of something. Each presented its own challenge. I used to love challenge, I thought.

She said that she preferred films without any score, that sound can kill an image.