Jennifer Brookes: My roommate, Nikki, came home from school a few months ago with a box filled to the brim with hideous clocks. She had been working as an assistant to a teacher at our school who is addicted to buying any and all cheap, broken, and horribly themed thrift store clocks. Since, apparently, his load was a bit too heavy, he so graciously provided Nikki with his leftovers. The box along with a good majority of the clocks inside were left on our sidewalk for the neighborhood’s clock enthusiasts, but a few gems did make it out alive. This originally symmetrical, pink and blue, vine infested bird house was one of them. The clock worked at its own discretion, always audibly ticking but only sporadically moving its fragile hands. After many, many hours of hot glue burns and ticking in silence, it became something of a barn for birds, profuse with windows, a structure that knows time but doesn’t tell it.

Eric Peterson: I’ve been a little hesitant to do anything vocally outside of oohs and ahhs because there is that problem of associating words with images. Lyrics are always difficult for me anyway. I was originally inspired to do a sort of ’50s ukulele-based pop song, but that gradually morphed into the jazz tune you hear this week. The voices you hear belong to Ryan Wylie and Natalie Stone, who helped arrange vocal harmonies on Friday. That cymbal you hear belongs to a child drumset that I have lying around (I wanted to use a full kit and real bass, but illness kept me from making the trek downtown where I keep those things). Thanks Natalie & Ryan.