A woman in Sault Ste. Marie records nine songs on a laptop with the built-in microphone. The furnace is audible underneath everything. She does not clean the furnace out. It is part of what the water carries.
The guitar case is held shut with electrical tape that has gone brittle. The case itself is older than the guitar inside it — a mahogany Seagull with a crack along the lower bout that she sealed with wood glue and a clamp borrowed from the neighbor's garage. The crack did not ruin the resonance. It changed it. The top vibrates differently now, with a slight rattle at the seam that appears only on the lowest two strings, only when she plays hard enough to mean it. She plays hard enough to mean it on every track.