Mute City Reflection

Ariel Knoebel

It was the hottest day of the year, by far. The air was visible, rising in ripples from the concrete, looking like cracks travelling across the fragile shell of an egg about to break open. Trevor pedaled slowly down the street, asphalt tacky in the thick heat of midday. His oversized t-shirt and shorts hung damply off his lanky frame, their prints a little too polished for the goofy child in the middle of a growth spurt who wore them, who woke up inside a different body at the start of each new day. He looked cool nonetheless. He could feel it from the inside, he could see it in the side-eyes and straight-up stares of the people he rolled by. 

Today he didn’t feel like a lanky kid made up of right angles and thin lines, but something akin to becoming a man. Not that he knew what that meant just yet… but he was starting to see it in small glimpses, always turning the corner just before he could get a good view. Today, he felt like he could fill his frame. His hands sat high on the curved handlebars of his older brother’s bike, leaning him back into a pose with more swagger than he could normally carry. His arms had to hang loose in soft curves that made him picture his elbow hanging off the windowsill of a muscle car with the windows down, cruising the streets like Miami Vice.

See, Trevor got paid today, for the first time ever. He mowed the lawn and cleaned up the yard of some neighbors down the street, and he walked away with twenty dollars in his pocket, a full afternoon ahead of him, and no one to answer to. So, he borrowed his brother’s bike and hit the road, despite the heat, to spend his hard earned money as he pleased. He wasn’t totally sure how far twenty dollars and a smile would get him, but he was dang well going to try to stretch it and see. 

He stashed the bike in the bushes around back the corner store, simply hoping no one would find it, or if they did they would leave it alone. He pushed open the front doors to a welcome blast of refrigerated air. The bright electric chime snapped the cashier’s eyes up from a magazine hidden below the lip of the counter as he sat behind a plexiglass barricade alongside the cartons of cigarettes and cheap bottles of booze. Trevor kept his back straight, his hands in his pockets. He sure as heck wasn’t going to give anyone a chance to tell him he was anything but a paying customer, no matter how they saw his age or his sneakers or the brown of his skin. He let his eyes scan hungrily across avocado-flesh green and shiny gold and juicy red plastic packaging, weighing the endless options of salty, crunchy, sweet treats stretched before him. 

Trevor walked to the back wall and pulled open the door of a steaming cold fridge, its contents wet as the hot air immediately condensed on their smooth surfaces. He grabbed a glass-bottled soda, leaving sweaty streaks across the bottles on either side. On his way to the register he scooped a bag of chips; the wrapper’s crinkle cracked through the cold as he met the cashier’s gaze. He dropped his dollars on the counter and swung back through the door, the electric chime following him into the dense, hot  air. 

He took his treats, bought with sweat and hard work, to the reservoir down the road. He sat under a tree he used to climb as a little kid and sipped soda and skipped rocks, watching the ripples race across the water, drops kicked up by the stones disappearing into the hot haze off the lake. 

Interview by L. Valena

Why don't you just start by telling me what you responded to.

I responded to a piece of music, which was fun and interesting. It was purely instrumental, a little bit electronic, very atmospheric. Different movements and vibes going on.

What was your first reaction?

My first reaction was that it felt very cinematic. I really felt like it was sound tracking something... it had a vibe to it. So that feeling was the first thing I captured from it, rather than something concrete. Rather than thinking of a place or experience, it was all about that vibe. There were two different emotional currents running through it. It started out feeling kind of dark, but then it sank into this very summertime, cruising, windows-down kind of feeling. I thought it was interesting to have that tension.

I really was thinking about how I would take this. As I was writing the piece, I felt like it could really turn into a longer thing, and I needed to stop myself because of the tension of those two emotional currents- it could go on forever. I think also the feeling of the present world definitely bled into that. When I was first listening to it, the first part of the song has these darker electronic noises, and police sirens were the first thing that came to my mind- alternating red and blue lights of the sirens, so the first thing I started writing was that. It ended up nowhere in the final piece, because that would have turned into more of a response to current events than to the piece itself, and I didn't feel like that was doing it justice. In sitting with the piece, and listening to it a few times, I got into other layers.

So you started with this police siren idea, and then you backed up and switched to this summertime vibe.

Yeah, well and I think they were really living together. I listened to the piece, let it go for a few days, came back to it and started writing. I think that first initial listen, I had that image of the flashing lights and a very literally dark image. But in coming back and listening to it, I heard a lot of joy in the song. There's this settledness, it settles at a point, so it didn't feel like the piece was reflecting that initial reaction that I had. I felt like I wanted there to be a tension in whatever came up, but that the ultimate feeling was a little bit more languid, and not as conflicted and abrupt.

Cool. Tell me about this character. Where did he come from? How did you get from that feeling to this little moment that you ended up exploring?

My first couple notes were sirens and lights and Miami Vice; that feeling of cruising- the freedom of that. Not having anywhere to be, just moving for the sake of it- feeling really free. That's where I started. At first I wondered if it was someone in a muscle car? I had these different images that were coming up from the song, but I just kept coming back to that feeling of ultimate joy. Being a kid, who's just gotten old enough to go out and explore on their own. That feeling of being an 'adult'- that came up out of that, and spoke to that tension I was feeling in a very different way. That initial conflict I was feeling of different currents of joy and angst. This young guy just kind of came to me. And then I saw the convenience store, and the endless opportunity that it presents to a kid with twenty bucks in their pocket. Loving life. No rules. Such low stakes in reality, but such high stakes in the moment for that person: “This is my chance!” So it went from a muscle car, to a kid on a big wheel, but what's in between? A bike that's too big for you. Again, that feeling of tension. I can go anywhere I want, but it's going to be a little bit harder than it should...

“... but maybe this is just how it is for adults?”

Yeah. I built it from there- this kid in that sultry, languid summertime vibe. No agenda. Where is he going and what is he doing? And that's when I felt like I could write an entire oddessey. He was going to stop and get some mango, and go down the street, and there was going to be someone playing music... but the time constraints caught up to me. That feeling of exploration, that tension of living in the world that you are just beginning to understand.

I think there's also an aspect of this piece that we should talk about- the aspect about race. There's an aspect to living in the world that you and I will never understand- the aspect of getting a little older and realizing that society is completely stacked against you. That's part of the experience of BIPOC that we just don't have any real reference for, which adds a layer of complexity to this piece that we should talk about.

Yeah. I'm generally not a fiction writer, and I’m a white woman. I was writing this kid into existence, I think in response to the times and in response to that initial reaction I had to this piece. That underlying undercurrent of tension, it just felt like this kid was a person of color. It's an experience that's top of mind for a lot of white people right now, and not something that I will ever truly understand. But from the tension I was feeling, it felt like a really natural fit. There's this this joy, but underneath there is always this dark current of something. It made it a really interesting exercise for me, as a writer, embodying this character who doesn't exist.

It feels impossible to make anything right now without speaking to... take your pick of which global upheaval we're working within. I think it will be interesting to see with everything being made during this time for this project, how much current events are bleeding into what is otherwise a response to kind of an isolated piece.

It is so interesting. There's a question that's coming up for me: as white people, do we have the right to channel that experience? Slash, do we have a responsibility to represent that experience? It's one or the other, or maybe it's neither, or maybe it's both.

I think that's the question that I've been wrestling with. In creating, in activism, in just existing right now. I think that's another tension that I think is really coming up, exactly as you're saying. As a white person who is more likely to be given a platform in many places, is it a responsibility to speak up as an ally, and advocate for this fight that can't be mine, but I deeply sympathize with and want to advocate for? Or is it just my job to get out of the way? Amplify Black voices or just shut up and let other people speak? It's so hard to know what is the right thing to do. And I think you said it well- is it our responsibility to tell these stories or do we just not have the right? And I do feel like it's both, which is an impossible situation to be in. Everything is an impossible situation right now.

These conversations, testing the boundaries and finding out how people react to it is part of it. As painful and uncertain as it feels, it's just an important part of the work of being an antiracist.

As I was writing this, I wondered if I should just not put the race of the character in there. It felt disingenuous to leave it out for the sake of not wanting to be wrong. I think in a way that's what this moment is calling for more than anything else. Not being afraid to look bad. To try with good intention, and be open to being wrong and to being told that you're wrong. That's our responsibility to learn, as white people in this moment. I'm open to the answer to this question being that it's not my right to write about this, and I think that's our job. I would rather be wrong than stagnant.

I'm with you! I think there's such an opportunity for growth as human beings.

This was a fun exercise, and in true form to the project, in speaking to all that we were just talking about, it's hard to know what conversation to be in right now. I have wanted and felt like I've had space to create, but it's felt really hard to start anything, because it feels irrelevant or too small. It was really nice to have a container and a defined goal. I think it's always a challenge for creativity to live within daily life, and that's especially true right now.

Any new advice?

I don't remember what my old advice was [Editor’s note: you can read it here and here]. But what I love about Bait/Switch is that you can't overthink it, you only have the time you have to sit down and make something. And allowing that to be a benefit rather than a hindrance to the project.

Call Number: C34MU | C36PP.knoMu

Ariel is a freelance writer and food scholar based in Boston, MA. She has written for Forbes Online, Eaten Magazine, and Life&Thyme, among others. She was raised to never leave the house without a book and loves to take a long walk with a warm drink in hand.