Just as I once migrated from one writing community (science fiction) to another (experimental poetry), I now find myself moving between music and poetry, and thus belonging to different tribes. However, while I needed to “leave home” by leaving science fiction, I have no intention of abandoning poetry in favor of music. In playing the theremin or in writing poetry, I am tracing, in Mallarmé’s terms, a constellation of black stars (either musical notes or words) upon a white sky (of silence or of the page). Still, I can no more physically touch the system of language than I can the force-field of the theremin.

The theremin has not altered the way I think about poetry, but the way I think about touch. Because two objects cannot occupy the same space simultaneously, there is, in the deepest sense, no such thing as touch. Magnify anything enough and you will find it is neither here nor there. This undulatory essence may be heard as the wailing emanation of the void’s own disquiet: the sound of the theremin.