Cutter
©2014 Craig Ashby
Digital Photograph

Sometimes I come home to piss and vomit And fistfights on the sidewalks. Sometimes it’s lovely pieces like Cutter. Considering my age, it’s hard not to think of Echo and The Bunnymen.

Post punk aside, this is one of those machines that cuts those tidy lines in asphalt. A machine that makes awful noises like most machines of its kind. You know the noises that wake you from sleep because the machines that make them only work around seven in the morning.

Speaking of horrible noises, several years ago they were putting in the foundation for a new building just across the street. It was a process that woke me too early for many months.

Back to the noise. It was otherworldly. The main noise was a deep howl. Low and from the belly with harmonies of whale calls. With high notes that made nails on a blackboard sound like Bach.

It was more than this too. I can easily say it was the most complex sound I have ever heard. It was like the bedrock was screaming. Like the Earth protesting the attack.

Maybe this pretty picture of an ominous machine is in the same family, but this machine is like a scalpel compared to whatever made that other noise.