I’m driving myself to the studio this morning.
Feels like a big improvement!
I want to finish wiring this red bra, and put her with her sisters. “It” becomes “she” as completion approaches. Sometimes these pieces that are garments end up with names. None of these have yet… but I’m open to the possibility. After all, when you talk to someone for a while, it’s only polite to discover their name isn’t it?
I had expected these garments to have personalities, and for them to have some sort of relationship with me… they all hold an aspect of my own character I’m sure, and there are common threads between many women here. But I hadn’t expected the strength of the relationship between the bras themselves. I now have three wired up and on top of the bookshelf in the studio, they talk to each other about me when I’m not here, I’m sure.
Today though, I want to look at my space afresh, with the prospect of it becoming a sound studio. In the middle of the afternoon it can become quite noisy. So it may well be we decamp to my house on the occasions when quiet recordings are required. I’m wondering if a portable screen thing across the window would work as a makeshift baffle, to keep in the noise we want, and keep out the noise we don’t. The metal windows are single glazed and reach the high ceiling. The occasional gatherings of snogging teenagers and smoking old men that congregate outside farmfoods on the wall can be raucous. The swaggering young men in caps and trainers and gold laugh and swear as they pass under my window. Apart from after school time, with the parade of pushchairs and crying babies, these happenings are unpredictable. As is the grind and swoosh of the street sweeper, who leaves his engine running while having a shouted conversation with either the old men or the teenagers… he seems to know them all. I think he leaves the engine running as a sort of nod in the direction of “still working”.
It may seem unlikely that I get any work done, as I am clearly fixated on what is going on outside. Well I do, and I am… both. I stitch while I listen. I know some characters by their voices alone, and have never looked out to see who the voice belongs to…except the man whose Black Country accent was heavy as coal, and sounded as if he was from somewhere far off and exotic. It was only because I could, later in the conversation understand the response of his companion, that I could decipher the mangled and extended vowel sounds and tune in to real words.
Some days it is like listening to a radio play, as the passers by are unaware of my existence above their heads.
Some of this noise I will want though… it will sit alongside sounds and lyrics and become backing vocal, brass section and rhythm. I may not be a musician, but I have come to consider these things my instruments. Good grief, that sounded pretentious. I do apologise… but the essence stands true.
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