“A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode.”
Source: All Tomorrow's Parties (2003), Ch. 38 : Vincent Black Lightning, p. 191
Context: If Skinner couldn't tell Fontaine a story about something, Fontaine would make up his own story, read function in the shape of something, read use in the way it was worn down. It seemed to comfort him.
Everything to Fontaine, had a story. Each object, each fragment comprising the built world. A chorus of voices, the past alive in everything, that sea upon which the present tossed and rode. When he'd built Skinner's funicular, the elevator that crawled like a small cable car up the angled iron of the tower, when they old man's hip had gotten too bad to allow him to easily climb, Fontaine had a story about the derivation of each piece. He wove their stories together, applied electricity: the thing rose, clicking, to the hatch in the floor of Skinner's room.
