Field Notes Toward a Taxonomy

What follows is the result of two years’ observation, conducted in offices, vehicles, gymnasia, one hospital waiting room, and a great many kitchens. No specimen was collected. Several collected themselves.

The naming convention is our own and we do not apologise for it. The vernacular names in general use are almost all metaphors of warfare, which tells you a good deal about who has been doing the naming and how they feel about the subject.

---

I. Basso profundo

The long, low, descending work. Characteristically unhurried; frequently arrives after a period of visible preparation.

Field markings: a slight backward lean; the outward extension of one leg.

Habitat: armchairs, exclusively. This specimen has never been recorded standing.

II. The piccolo

Brief, high, and startling to all present including the artist. Duration under half a second.

Field markings: the artist’s own expression of surprise, which is the most reliable identifier in the entire taxonomy and which no one has ever successfully faked.

Habitat: staircases. Something about the ascent.

III. The staccato

A series of three to five discrete reports at regular intervals. Distinguished from IV by the evenness of the spacing.

Field markings: none. The specimen is entirely acoustic.

Habitat: cosmopolitan. Recorded on every continent and in every social class, which is unusual and, we think, significant.

IV. The false ending

Superficially resembles III, but the final report arrives after a pause long enough that the room has already resumed talking.

This is the cruellest specimen in the register and the only one that reliably produces laughter, because the room has been made to participate in its own ambush.

Habitat: dinner tables, late.

V. The tremolo

Sustained, wavering, of uncertain duration. The artist has begun something they cannot see the end of.

Field markings: total physical stillness, followed by an expression of dawning arithmetic.

Habitat: yoga studios. Overwhelmingly.

VI. The interrogative

Rises at the end. Nobody knows why this happens. It has been recorded in every language group and appears to be pre-linguistic.

Field markings: the room’s response, which is almost always to answer it.

VII. The silent, of the first kind — tacet honestum

Produces no sound and no consequence. Almost certainly the most common specimen in existence and, by definition, the least documented.

It is worth pausing here. The overwhelming majority of all works ever produced belong to this species, and not one of them has ever been observed, discussed, named, or complained about. The entire cultural apparatus surrounding this subject — every joke, every taboo, every technique of concealment — has been built on the rare and unrepresentative minority that anybody notices.

VIII. The silent, of the second kind — tacet horribile

Produces no sound and a great deal of consequence.

Field markings: the artist’s absence. This specimen is essentially never observed in the presence of its author, and we have come to believe that this is not a coincidence but a defining characteristic of the species.

Habitat: lifts, from which the artist has just departed. Open-plan offices, at the exact moment someone stands up to get a coffee.

The remarkable thing about tacet horribile is that it is the only specimen in the register that has learned to hunt.

IX. The confessional

Announced by its author, before, during, or immediately after. Frequently named. Occasionally rated.

Field markings: eye contact, which no other specimen permits.

Habitat: long marriages; fathers; the north of England.

X. The sympathetic

Produced deliberately, shortly after another party’s work, for the express purpose of dividing the room’s attention.

The only altruistic specimen in the taxonomy and the rarest. In two years of observation we recorded four confirmed instances, and in all four the parties were close friends of long standing.

We have concluded that it cannot be produced on demand and that attempting it is the strongest signal of genuine friendship the form is capable of transmitting.

XI. The one under general anaesthetic

Recorded once, in a hospital, by an observer who was not the artist and who describes the surgical team’s reaction as “entirely unremarkable, which was somehow worse.”

Included for completeness. The artist has no memory of it and will never be told.

---

A note on method

We are aware that the register above is incomplete, that several of the boundaries are arguable, and that specimen IV may in fact be a behaviour of III rather than a species in its own right.

We would welcome correspondence. We would particularly welcome further confirmed sightings of X, which we suspect is more common than four instances in two years and which we may simply be too unpleasant a person to have been present for.