The cicadas, they’re living, they’re dying, when will they finish all this dying? The annual buzzing of the Hemiptera clan, rising, falling, quieting, rising, competed in late summer into autumn with the incessant, months-long construction sounds sprawled across the city as sewers and street corners were dug out, rebuilt and just as often dug out again. Drilling and jackhammering tapered as each day grew long, and cicada song rose from yards and trees that indeterminate few hundred feet away. Glenn Branca dubbed his Symphony No. 6 “Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven,” and maximal minimalism of workman’s percussion and long-sleeping insect alternated infernal choruses by chattering chance at the gates of rebirth and doom. Pavement restored, eggs laid, only the mockery of October’s Indian summer, pulsing with heat, was left before the surely grievous but snow-hushed winter to come. (Ray Pride)
