Kate Carr - Where to begin

A Closer Listen

One of the most unexpected revivals during the COVID crisis has been letter writing, as people have yearned for a more personal touch than an email, text or Instagram post.  Personal phone calls are also on the rise, as well as milk deliveries from real milkmen (a species we had thought extinct).  Kate Carr‘s piece Where to begin was commissioned by the BBC show The Verb to address the topic of loneliness, which is on everyone’s mind right now.  Using glass beads, chimes, the sound of pen on paper and people reading love letters in their native tongues, Carr has created a piece for our times.

“Looking to enjoy again some blue wide skies and waters,” the premiere narrator intones with a sigh.  The beaches reopened in Jacksonville today; in New York the beach budget was cut, and this may be the year without a swim.  How better to share our joy, our despair, our love than in a handwritten letter?  “I’m listening,” a woman and man write to each other.  Before the crisis, the world was enduring a deficit of listening, as subtleties and softness were drowned by louder voices and tones.

During the Great Wars, before the advent of computers, love letters were sent back and forth overseas: heartfelt confessions, family news, fears (often excised by those who intercepted such letters).  As they read the letters, the recipients often wondered if the authors were still alive.  The added weight brought meaning to even the most maudlin of words: “I miss you.”  “Tell Mom I love her.”  Letters that arrived intact were considered holy, kept in a family trunk, inherited by children.

Carr returns this tenderness to the discipline, interspersing the missives with instructions on how to write a love letter, courtesy of Salomé Voegelin.  “Whenever I imagine being truly joyful, I picture myself with you,” writes one lover.  Life is broken down to its simplest essence: connection.  This has been the greatest robbery of the crisis: not the lost income, but the lost ability to embrace.  An honest love letter is like such an embrace, unfolding and refolding, time and time again, defying the passage of time.  But there is also an element of sadness in Carr’s piece:  “I knew my poor word selection was going to come back to haunt me.”  “Guess you had to erase it.”  We hear scratching out, crumpling, ripping.  Will the love letter remain unwritten?

The pen is drawn across the paper like a lover’s hand across an arm, a shoulder, a heart.  We send our love in the post in hopes that it will be returned.  “I believe that I have fallen in love with you.”  What brave words!  People are still falling in love, even now, separated by meters, yards or great distances. This is no small miracle.  Where to begin?  (Richard Allen)

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Sat Apr 18 00:01:06 GMT 2020

The Quietus

There's no way that prolific sound artist Kate Carr could have known, when she set about conceiving her piece Where To Begin, how apropos its themes would become. A low-key meditation on loneliness and longing, centred around the act of writing love letters, it is a poignant soundtrack for the pandemic-imposed isolation many of us are sharing at press time.

First conceived as a shorter piece for BBC show The Verb, the elements of the expanded version of Where To Begin are simple. Sections of love letters sourced from several different people are recited in a variety of languages, over a bed consisting of the sound of glass beads falling on various surfaces and instruments and yielding tones which alternate between chaotic and dulcet. Recordings of pens scratching across paper punctuate the proceedings.

Not much to it, but then, there's beauty in simplicity, right? Aurally, the falling beads are somewhat of a piece with recordings of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient structures, albeit in miniature and seemingly more carefully arranged. This is not a "big room" recording, by any stretch (though it does do some fun things with stereo separation); it's headphone fodder all the way.

Few will be able to speak every language included herein, lending sections of the text an air of mystery. This adds to the piece's overall air of loneliness and disconnection: there's a certain dread, after all, in feeling like you can't understand or be understood. The layers of voices also help to evoke the act of pacing around the room trying to outrun an overbearing internal monologue, an exercise many of us are undoubtedly working into our daily routine at this point whether we're currently smitten or not.

For some, Where To Begin may hit especially close to home right now, which may make for uneasy listening. Still, if you've got the intestinal fortitude, it is an intriguing work, a rewarding way to while away some of the lonesome times ahead.

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Mon May 18 17:50:38 GMT 2020