This video of a group of Swedes, oxenlike, pulling a large phonograph cone/plow through the countryside is very lovely. It reminds me of this bit of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Primal Sound” quoted in Friedrich Kittler’s Gramophone , Film, Typewriter (stay with me here):

The coronal suture of the skull has—let us assume—a certain similarity to the close wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. What is one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey […] along the coronal suture?

What variety of lines, then, occurring anywhere, could one not put under the needle and try out?

The sound is as one might expect from a cone being dragged through the dirt, so what really ends up being striking in this video are the expressions of exertion and the array of people dragging the cone.

(via Everyday Listening)