Underfoot and Underway

My life used to have people everywhere in it: not only audiences, but service station attendants, truck drivers, the occupants of the motel room next door, farmers, Priests, journalists and artists. I used to crave solitude.

Now it has cables. All I crave is to take a step without tripping over.

I have filled the Old Nerida Shearing Shed with recording gear. Apart from the computer, the configuration has been left in place over night. I like Brian Eno’s approach of never trying to replicate a sound, but moving always on. I also like to cheat, so I have left the microphones in their currently balanced positions. If anyone tries to get inside, then disaster awaits.

It the owner arrives with a sheep or two in need of a sudden crutching, then disaster awaits me. I have permission to be there, but not to tangle up his whole operation with cables draped over the wool press and wriggling through the number one pen.

I came out of the shed after five hours recording with so much dust in my throat that parts of my uvula meet the requirements of an organic garden. Much tea and orange juice has broken it up, but there is still a husk to my voice. I hope that a good night’s sleep will clear it all away so that I can record for real tomorrow. (Actually, I hope that a good night’s sleep will happen, full stop.)

I took a rough mixdown of the best mic test, and it sounds great. It may take time to explain and market Lowbrow aesthetics, but anyone with a fresh mind and ear will already hear wonderful things. It has been a huge risk, but I am thrilled with the result. The read still needs work - it is still too hesitant in places, and occasionally trapped by the written as opposed to the spoken rhythm, but it is mostly alive and rich.

I have lost variance in favour of a centre. Through the earpieces of an iPod, this has paid of very greatly. It is hard not to believe that I am a little to one side of you, speaking from an alternative universe.

Lately, I’ve received messages and emails urging me not to look over the fence but to stay and play nicely in the back yard. Enough of these, and I begin to feel crushed small, like an aluminium can underfoot. The world feels no larger than the breadth of the cables that bring the message.

But today, the world is huge. The narrow cables don’t count. They are wisps upon a giant, and it does no harm to trip over them. Getting up is easy. And the dividends uncountable.     

Noël Christian
homestead:Theatre of Words
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