$50.00
**QUIE MUSIC FOR QUI LISTENING — Tape 1 & Tape 2 (C90s, Stone Era Mix)**
no day, no year, no moon right. everything still humming under sky like wet teeth. the tribe call it **QUIE**, not quiet, but *quie*, the sound between breath and stone dust. there is no music, just the listening, all the time listening until bone gets tired of being inside.
Tape 1 made from animal nerve stretched across rock, spool of tendon, smell like rain on rot. the old woman say it records dream of *Brain*, that warm lump that makes thunder when no storm near. she point to the pillar of meat in the middle of the clearing, carved badly with these symbols:
```
BRAIN: control thing, do not eat
SPINAL CORD: long snake that keeps thought inside
PNS: fingers of the rock, twitch when hungry
SOMATIC: move move move even if you dead
```
nobody knows why the pillar sweats. maybe it’s alive, maybe it’s listening too hard. the children put their ears on it, and it makes small *clicks* like teeth counting.
they call it **column of eating disorders** because everyone forgets how to eat right after hearing it. they chew dirt, air, hair, light. the chewing never stops, it becomes the rhythm. Tape 1 catches it all, and when played back, the sound comes out slower, like a nervous system dreaming of itself.
one night, Tape 2 starts without hand. no one wind it, no one say go. it spins and the sound is *spine spine spine spine* over and over, until people forget walking. only crawling now. only eyes wide open, head tilted wrong.
A man try to stop it by throwing fire, but the flame just sit there, refusing to burn, making sound like *sssssss—QUIE*. he laughs, or maybe cries, his jaw falls off, still chewing.
the elder says, “Brain is too loud, must hide it in rock again.” they dig hole under the pillar, bury the tapes with small bones. the pillar hums worse. someone’s spinal cord starts to move outside the body, dragging itself toward the cave wall like it remembers something from Tape 1.
another one of them, younger, draws new picture on the wall:
```
Brain → Stone
Stone → Tape
Tape → Bone
Bone → Again
```
it don’t make sense, but maybe it never did. the sound keeps happening, low underfoot. like footsteps that don’t know who’s walking.
In the morning there’s no tribe, just cave dust and 2 c90 shells made of bark, spinning by wind. they whisper through holes:
> “Qui listen, qui listen again, qui never stop—”
sky gets nervous, shakes out thunder. the planet’s spinal cord twitches once, twice, then lies still, pretending to sleep,
but the tapes keep turning, forever playing something like *music*,
or maybe *brain noise*,
or maybe
Numbered edition of 1