Tuesday 17 April 2018

Reflection 2

It's been a long time since my last post here, several months in fact. On the 2nd of February I began another Memory Mix, not dissimilar in style to those I'd previously written about, a 4-channel composition, but this time imagining certain effects added to each:


1

A faulty fluorescent light. It blinks lazily once turned on seemingly deciding whether to light or not. When it is momentarily illuminated it's hollow plunk resonates with a metallic ring which is somehow out of place for glass and light. Flickering again soon after a sustained hum into a sustained light, the pitch of the hum drops before the hollow plunk returns, rings out again, and the process is repeated.

FX: Huge reverb with plenty of delay on the plunks.

2

A huge metal door to a warehouse. Concertina in style it rarely opens save occasionally when something larger than a person must leave. On such an occasion a massive screeching rents the air as the steel door folds noisily back on itself scraping the coarse concrete floor. Obliterating all other sounds for the duration of it's movement, it's harsh and anguished scream penetrates the listener like a knife to the ribs.

FX: Repeated every 16 steps with gradual and incremental distortion.

3

Flagpoles on a quay. Whipped and buffeted in the gusts of wind that sweep along the promenade, their flags slap and clap chaotically. Standing in parallel to the poles and at a close distance the listener can also discern a percussive clatter and metallic ring where metal washers securing each flag by a rope strike the pole repeatedly. Rotating on the spot and orientating one's listening ears slightly from left to right gives the illusion of phasing echoes.

FX: Shifts in pitch on the echoes.

*****

Shortly after writing that I abandoned this text. Since then I haven't written another word in my journal. Why, you might ask? Well, for a number of reasons, but at the time back in February the main reason was further dissatisfaction with writing in this way, and an inability to write about that dissatisfaction too. Copying out that portion just now I'm struck with how unimaginative it is as much as anything else - that it is the written equivalent of a field recording, (and no disrespect to field recordists) but this isn't what interests me, or rather that I feel that writing in this way goes nowhere, in that it just reproduces or tries to reproduce an experience, which it invariably and inevitably also fails to do satisfactorily. Even with the inclusion of an imaginary effect to direct the reader-listener to something else, it's still essentially a record of a memory altered in such a way that is recognisable in the realm of a treated field recording or composition, and that's not a direction I want to go in.

At that time I also was reading Jason Khan's In Place (Errant Bodies Press, Audio Issues Vol. 6, 2015) and while I enjoyed both Khan's aural and visual texts recording the places he visited I was frustrated by the lack of reflection or enquiry into how he felt about what he heard so as to guide my own reading-listening. And too, I couldn't help but feel a similar dissatisfaction in this incomplete transfer of experience, that what was missing is what might interest me more, or might at least direct me toward what I feel is lacking in my own texts. While I did find the doubling or multiplying of experience in reading one sonorous experience while listening to my own place while I read interesting, that experience of mine seemed slightly at odds with Khan's intentions I felt, and propelled me to read less of him and instead listen more to me.

Turning then from reading that book I did what I ordinarily do when I need ideas and I read fiction instead, this time reading A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Gallery Beggar Press, 2013). An incredible, thought-provoking, moving and brutal novel, it's flow-of-consciousness first-person style of narration is arresting and inventive. What struck me most about it with regard to what I read in comparison to Khan's book, is that there was real art here, that it effected me in such a way that not only was I compelled to read more, devouring pages and pages at a time in listening to it's continuous interior monologue, but that McBride's fictional character in the writing that was conveyed showed more of an experience of a person to me than Khan's factual and literal descriptions of sounds, sights and places.

While I was in London when I began A Girl..., I was in the US visiting my fiancee Jennie when I finished it. By this point in March I was still thinking about what I might write here, but frankly I see Jennie so little that I didn't dwell on writing much, or when I did, it felt like time should be better spent experiencing rather than writing about the experience. This brings me to another reason why I stopped writing and that is that I need certain conditions to write. These conditions to write are also quite different from those I need to work - that is art work made in the studio - and too for that matter those times when I either cannot work or I must or want to do nothing ie. not work. When I was with Jennie for example, I thought about ideas occasionally but generally not working was the most imperative thing, or better still, that being with her, how she inspires me to enjoy and experience all that there was to do in the now of her company, that was the most important thing.

Similarly since then, when in paid employment I've mostly looked toward having time to work in the studio, and while I have often had the time to write while at work or during my commute, again these aren't the best conditions for writing I feel. In fact, what I've become most aware of since all this time has passed is that the best conditions for me to write is after a period of silence, of not writing for a long while. That not only do I have more to say, and set out in a legible and logical way (which the words have hitherto been all fragmented and confused) but that the act of writing whether I scrawl and scribble with pen and paper or bash and hammer these keys on my laptop, is done so at a time perhaps when I need to listen to myself and collect my thoughts and my ideas together, and not so much as an act of catharsis but more as the most immediate means to address and interrogate myself; to quieten the noise and chatter (and to some extent an anger at the muteness of the other selves) within me and channel these thoughts and feelings productively, entering into a meaningful dialogue.

Of course I still have my (self)doubts and I can't altogether reconcile the feeling that blogging or sharing my thoughts in a public forum online like this isn't all that far removed from daubing graffiti on a wall or standing on a soapbox at Speaker's Corner spouting nonsense to passer's-by, but it does however continue to press me to consider what I experience and reconsider those things I think and feel. I still don't know where my reading, my research, or this continual interrogation of listening through writing will lead me, but I do still continue to feel that it's important to do so, if only after periods of not writing and not posting. I now have some ideas of what I can and want to explore with my writing in future but also too an appreciation that I will write these when I'm ready and not before. That there are also other things to read, do, and enjoy, with company or alone, or not to do anything, and each of these things can and do contribute to my research even if they don't appear to do so. I shouldn't feel compelled to write for the sake of writing something but do so only when I have something I need to say in words because that's the best or only way. And besides, should anyone read or keep track of what I post, I respect that their time is precious to them too, so periods of not reading what I write is probably wise too! I will write again, I just don't know when or about what, and that's a good thing I think. More time for people, places, things.. And of course, listening too.






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