Musing s01e03 - Dr. Charlotte Arculus

This week I am musing with Dr. Charlotte Arculus. We talk about time, analogue radios, improvisation and curiosity.

https://www.charlottearculus.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:03

Hello and welcome to Musing, the podcast where we have a conversation with artists about their influences. Today I'm Musing with Dr. Charlotte Arculus. She is a bag lady, vocalist, improviser, creative theorist, and sonic visual artist. At the heart of her creative inquiry is the exploration of emergent expression and murmuration. Working creatively with feminist materialist and post-human philosophy, Charlotte's sound work is an ongoing series of experiments and collaborations, listening deeply to time and place and working at the intersections of electronics, acoustics, digital media, divination, incantation and magic. Charlotte has an ongoing field recording and sound practice in the Air Valley. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Wow, that sounds amazing. Who wrote that?

SPEAKER_06 0:55

So I'd generally like to start off asking you about a recent project, a current one, and an upcoming one if it's not embarked.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Great. Okay, lovely. So shall I talk about a recent project?

SPEAKER_06 1:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

It's recent, it's also current, but it's a kind of recent happening. Um, which was a witch walk. Um and it was a pilgrimage with uh two women who I'd actually never met before we did it. We met online and I'd uh seen their project on Instagram, and it's a project called We Are Witch Quilt. And uh they they're textile artists, and they've been making this quilt um with a with a whole community of people who've been making and sending in quilt squares that commemorate uh women who were murdered for witchcraft in East Anglia, of which there were many. Um, and I've been following it on Instagram because it's kind of it's quite a dear as a sort of middle-aged woman um who speaks her mind, who's clever um and doesn't shut up sometimes. I kind of feel a great affinity with a lot of those women who were murdered. Um so I've been following them on Instagram and then they gave a call out uh that they were doing a walk um to commemorate the the witches, and they were gonna do it in the clothes of the day, and they gave a call out if anybody wanted to kind of contribute and join them. So I just messaged them, which was an Instagram thing, and said, I want to walk with you and listen and record um the walk and just be with you as part of it, and I could I can make some visual image, and they got back in touch and we talked and we went back and forth a bit, and um I think they came to an understanding of the sort of thing that I do and the sort of thing that I don't do because I'm not a document make a documentary maker, and I'm not I'm certainly not a filmmaker, I'm a VJ, and I can explain the difference between VJ and filmmaker as I see it later. Um, but we met up at Limpenhoe Church and we slept in the church that night. I actually slept on a grave, but it was the night of the solstice, so I set my alarm and got up at about half past three to do a field recording of the actual time of the solstice. Um and then I went and slept in my van because I didn't want to wake them up again. Um and we slept in Wing Limpenhoe Church and then we walked. We got the train from Cantley to Bernie Arms. Oh, that's what I should have said. It was the walk, that was the reason I got in in touch with them, is because they wanted to walk along the Year Valley to Great Yarmouth. That's a very important thing I neglected to say. Uh, which is basically a haunt of mine. It's it's um I love walking that that valley. Um it's sort of become, yeah, very it's become like home to me, I guess. I think it's where I feel that I'm from, which it which is extraordinary because I'm actually from the Peak District, and I never thought I'd say I was from down here. So anyway, it was that that that kind of prompted me to get on with them, uh to get in touch with them. Um and we walked from Bernie Arms, and I don't know if you know Bernie Arms, but it's the it's the most infrequently used railway station in uh in England, I think, or possibly the UK, and it's right in the middle of the marshes, and it's about four hours' walk from Great Yarmouth, and you walk you end up walking round Bradenwater and sort of alongside the Accle Strait into Great Yarmouth. Um, but it's this extraordinary um place where you get off, and it's just a platform, there's no buildings or anything like that, and the train pulls off like a scene from Spirited Away, and you're suddenly there's something about those marshes is that you kind of arrive there on whatever mechanical contraption, and then you get out and you move into it, and there's something about those marshes that suddenly hits you, and it's a wildness. And coming, yeah, coming from the Peak District, I kind of you know thought there wasn't a lot of wildness in East Anglia, but there certainly is there. There's a kind of I don't know, there's a vibe to it, um, and they'd never been there before, so I just said watch the train go, and then you turn around and you're just in the middle of nowhere, and then you walk. Um, and they were wearing linen clothes of the day, sort of Tudor medieval clothes, and it was one of the hottest days of the year, I think. Um yeah, it was about 30 degrees, but it got a bit cooler as we kind of got around the corner to Yarmouth. Um, and I field recorded the whole, I documented the sound and and did a bit of visual recording just with my iPhone. So I documented the night in Limpano, which is Midsummer's Eve in Limpenhoe Church. They let us use the organ and play on that, which was amazing. One of the women is uh Eleanor Dale of an Off at Broads, beautiful folk singer, and uh she'd kind of um come up with a couple of songs that she wanted to sing, and she sang them at different parts upon the journey, but she sang them in the church, churches resonate, which is wonderful. We messed about doing drones on the organ. Um we Ruth Dylan, the other artist whose kind of baby and brainchild this is, had cooked a medieval meal for us, so we kind of ate together, it was really beautiful. So I recorded things like the kind of organ jam, the um the sort of I'm kind of interested in recording the Tombra of things. I recorded some of I recorded the handle, it's supposed to be a haunted handle in Limpano Church, so I stuck a magnetic um mic onto it and kind of rattled it about. Um I like recording, you know, kind of rustling of things. And I had a uh a bunch of different microphones with me. So I had some binaural uh microphones that you put in your ears so you can kind of get that kind of texture.

SPEAKER_06 7:20

Um yeah, I've never got to use those, but it's it's a really interesting way of recording.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

It is a really interesting way of recording.

SPEAKER_06 7:26

Do you put them on a do you put them on like a uh dummy head?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

You can do, but I this is my top tip for any listeners is Zennheiser did um some that they're like headphones, they are headphones, but they're also microphones, and I think they were really, really expensive when they came out, and they have a lightning to Apple, Apple Lightning. So you you I've picked two pairs up off eBay for about 25 quid.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

So those are my top tip for anybody who wants to do binaural recording. So I put them in my own ears, um, or I have a doll's head that I can put them in, so so either or um, but that's a really kind of good way, and they're very, very good mics, and they're just you know, you can kind of wear them and they're quite discreet. Um, but yeah, when you listen back, it can depending on what you've recorded, it can be quite spooky because it's so you know, you start looking around you for the sounds. Um, so I I use those. I used um um a geophone, uh which is a kind of like my magnetic um piso contact mic, um, which is good for recording sort of drones and things like that, and uh sort of just a pair of mics that go into a field recorder, um, and yeah, and and we just sort of walked. Um and my field recorder packed up halfway through, halfway round. I had the binaural mics which go into my phone, it packed up, which was really kind of like whoa, what's going on here? And I I still don't know what's going on. I bought a new card for it when I got to Great Yarmouth, and it worked fine. So um that was really strange, um, and it was a very, very hot day, so it might have been that. Um, and when we got to Great Yarmouth, so we had this amazing day in the hot heat, walking and listening. Oh, and and the thing that I need to say, which is really important, is we read the name. Ruth's done quite a lot of research into the names of the women who were killed because a lot of people talk about the Witch Finder General, and his name is very common, and I'm not going to speak it again. In fact, I even forget what he's called, which is great and insignificant, but uh, you know, the names of the women, and actually there's men as well, and and I think there's probably a sort of queer element to it that is yet to be uncovered. Um, you know, who were those men and why, you know. Yeah, I think you know, there's lots of stories, and some of the women aren't even, they don't even have a first name, it'll be Mother Grey and Daughter Grey. Um, but the thing, so so we had the list and we read the list out. Now the thing about the list of the women who were murdered for witchcraft in East Anglia is it takes over ten minutes to read. Ruth made a scroll of it. It's long, it's metres and metres long in small time. We're not we talk about hundreds and hundreds of people in this kind of and you know, over you know, there was a kind of peak of witch hunting, but sort of, and it's yeah, it's just it felt yeah, it wasn't a jolly, it was an amazing thing. We got on really well together, and we've really made a bond because we did something quite magical together, um, but there was a weight to it, yeah, there's a weight to the whole project. We're not mucking about here. Um, we tied things to trees, we kind of I sort of did an invocation which was really about time because I think a lot about time, and that that it isn't absolute and that it is flexible, and the kind of and I think a lot about my partner's a Buddhist and that kind of sending of compassion back through time, and also inviting those people in their darkest hour into my time because I felt very free. I felt, you know, it was a beautiful night, we were doing this kind of wonderful, amazing thing, and we were free, and so it was about sending compassion back in time and bringing bringing those people in their darkest hour through time to be with us, I guess. Um, and just as an intention, whatever you think, um, and I'm a philosopher, not a hippie, um, whatever you think, it the intention does some kind of magic. And the next day we uh oh no, but when we got to Great Yarmouth, we just had a little rest. I went and got a new SD card for my field of cardiac, which thankfully did work after that. And then we met up with a uh Wiccan practitioner whose name I can't remember. I'll try and find that out. Um, she was amazing, and she held a ritual for us on North Dean's Beach, uh, which was again very profound. It was in a kind of you know, this sort of um historic this practice that kind of is sort of re-evoking a kind of more pagan time, which felt very it felt very wonderful. And then the next day we went to Great Yarmouth Minster, where six witches are buried, which is very unusual for witches to be buried in consecrated ground, um, and we don't quite know why, but there was a little posse of people, and the vicar, who's a woman, um actually kind of led a small ceremony where we read the the names out again, but she she kind of um led this equally beautiful and moving ceremony with a little posse of Great Yarmouth people who were just interested and quite knowledgeable about what had happened. Um, and and you know, I'm recording all the time, I'm kind of there as the sound recordist and sort of archivist. And then the last thing we did, which was in the afternoon, as part of this pilgrimage, was spend the afternoon at the toll house in Great Yarmouth, which is where the prisons were and also where women would have been sentenced. And I was a little bit like, Oh, we're really gonna go there, but actually, it again it was sort of it was interesting, and particularly with this invocation, because we're free and it's a museum, and people are kind of coming there to sort of think about it, and it's like and it's about remembering and not forgetting. Um, and the two women who were running the museum that day were absolutely brilliant as well, and they were again full of knowledge and real minds of information. So it just felt that people were very interested in our project. The people of Limpenhoe took us to the station. It was uh, you know, so all the way along, these kind of people were just very supportive of it, it kind of ignited people's imaginations. So, yeah, so that it was it was a huge privilege being um the sound archivist for this. So I've got you know multiple sound files of lots of things. I mean, one of the most beautiful ones which I've posted on my Instagram page is Eleanor singing this beautiful um, I think it's a it's a Shetland, or no, I think it's an East Coast, oh yeah, maybe it's Shetland, sea shanty, or it's a Selkie song. Under the bridge, the main bridge, was you get into Great Yarmouth with all the traffic going over it, uh, but there's kind of resonance under the bridge, and it sounds really beautiful. It's just the raw recording taken on my binaurals, and I just it just sounded so beautiful. I posted it with like a quick visual mix as well. Um, so you know that could be seen now. Um, and what I'm going to do is just I have a sound project, all the um files are now in a project where I can kind of mix them, I can, you know, do various things with them. I might do a bit of jiggery pokery with some of it, you know. I mean I can do anything that I like really, and and that's when I I guess I'll sort of yeah, start to I'll probably make a collage and then I'll see what else that might be enough. And I'll take the visuals and I will also visually collage that and then I'll put the two together. Uh, but I might do something that is I think we might do a kind of performance or installation piece or a series of installations where the where the sonic and visual material might be kind of mixed and played around with in a kind of more live improvised way.

SPEAKER_06 16:23

That sounds really good. I'm glad that there's an ongoing element to it.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Definitely, yeah. So I work across a lot of disciplines, but I guess what my um my job and my career, I mean I'm deeply unambitious, but at the same time I'm deeply curious. Um, so it's it's uh but my job has been working with very, very young children. So I work with under threes, um and um they teach me a lot um and they teach me a lot about time and they teach me a lot about what it actually means to produce and to think and to what creativity is and where it comes from, and I always they uh they are my kind of navigation, they're my compass in a way. Um, and whenever I you know feel like it's all going off track, I sort of I hang out with toddlers. Um and I think it is crippling the pressure to produce is a kind of crippling thing, and production just doesn't come from being under the kosh. Um, it's not production, it's reproduction, and that's the thing about capitalism, it wants to reproduce, it's about reproduction. What is already known, what is already what is already can be sold, variations on what can already be sold, and you you see that in arts and culture, but you also see it in factories and cars or whatever. But production, and that is to say the the production of the new, the the hitherto unthought of, you know, cannot be it cannot be engineered or made or actually kind of um colonized by capitalism because it takes that it takes time, it takes play, it takes ex it takes open-ended exploration and experimentation that does not have its goal. And that's the thing about ambition is that ambition tends to know exactly where it's going, it knows already, uh, whereas curiosity doesn't know where it doesn't know where the hell it's going, it's on an adventure, and it's kind of and I sort of realised, you know, I realised quite recently that I'm just deep I'm not ambitious, I don't want to know where I'm going. It doesn't interest me because I know it won't lead me to anything that's new, yeah. And that's why I work across, you know, across different disciplines as well, I think. But so do toddlers, you know, they work across different disciplines, and I'm particularly interested, and my kind of my my academic work is really has been with people under three who don't really have developed language or haven't yet been I'm gonna just throw it in there, haven't been colonized by adult language yet. So the way that they think is not um through language, it's through all sorts of creative disciplines. So they think through movement, through feeling, expression, um, you know, through through all kinds of different modes and all of the time in different layers. And we forget, and I think Western philosophy has taught us that um thinking is uh thinking words and it's really hard as an adult to break out of that. And um and I really love I mean I really love the philosopher Deleuze and Deleuze and Guitari because I mean his PhD just kind of blew the idea and blamed blows Descartes with it very gently, very politely, just blows most of Western philosophy out of the window in the first chapter, and it's beautiful to read because you just think thank fuck for that, you know. It's it's it's time to start thinking differently.

SPEAKER_06 20:37

I suppose going back to the what we were talking about at the start with the the um the walk, the pilgrimage, do you think that's something that if you didn't have that curiosity, if instead you were like this is you know, you were heading to a specific goal, but having that curiosity meant that when you when you saw that and you were drawn to it, yeah, you could follow the instinct, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

And and and something opens up. These people I don't know, and you know, you can't be doing it all the time or else you'd go mad, you know. You have to really listen, and I think that's what you said that really prompted me that you know you have lots and lots of things, and you don't know which of them to go for, and I think that's a you know, it's kind of like you're in a web, and there's lots of threads, and you need to wait for the one that vibrates, and it might not even be that thread, it might be a thread that's attached to that thread. You have to be, and if you're kind of beavering away, being ambitious, trying to realize a particular thing, you can't do that. Um, and you know, there is there are times it's like okay, we're doing this now, and that's a very different thing, it's a kind of movement, but it's it's that it's the period of waiting and Thinking and mulling and not really doing very much at all, um, and not being productive, or just listening. I think it kind of that sort of you know, I mean that brings us quite neat neatly into sort of listening as a practice rather than kind of making because listening is very much you know, as a musician or sound maker, what is really key is also the listening, which you know it can always be developed and it can always be better, and we can always listen more.

SPEAKER_06 22:35

It's a key part of improvisation as well. It's not just focusing on I'm gonna make these sounds, it's it's responding, yes, and leaving space as well, I think. Yeah, so I think we've met before through improvising.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

We have, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:50

So it'd be good to talk about that a bit, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

And about connection perhaps listening and sounding at the same time, I guess it is. I mean I think of I think there's something you know profoundly magical about improvisation. Well, it's more than magical. I think I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of just defy my terms a little bit. I think I think also Western philosophy has um it has insisted that we are individual subjects and that we have an interior and an exterior, and that's sort of written into our bones in the West, not not so much in other cultures, I don't think, and not so much if you're a toddler. I think if you're a toddler, these are the people I get my inspiration from, the sense of of I and you, of self and other, of of me and the rest of the world, it's quite blurry, it's not it's not clear-cut. And I think that and and the thing about toddlers is they are absolutely brilliant improvisers, they're much, much better at adults that at improvising, and you can see it. I mean, if you if you kind of watch me hang out with them, you know, suddenly things erupt out of nowhere, and it's this sensing of each other, and it's through a real kind of multimodal sense. So they might all stop turning at once, or there might just be a load of running or shrieking or something, and then it kind of goes down, and it's like birds, birds do it as well, birds that murmur, crows, rooks do it as well. So improvising musically for me, kind of in whatever ensembles, we're always searching for that. It feels to me like we're always searching for those kind of moments for me when I actually lose my sense of self, and that's the practice because you don't all the time, you're struggling with your sense of self, your self gets in the way, you're trying to get yourself out of the way, you're worrying, is this alright? What's going on? And then sometimes you lose it, you lose that sense of self, and then you just become part of something that is more than you, and that is profoundly joyful, and it's kind of it's something, it's real, you know, it's very, very real, and you just see other people do it. You sometimes see dancers, you see you hear musicians do it, you hear it when it isn't, but you mean I mean I guess you probably hear it even within some, I can't even believe I'm about to say this, but even some classical music, you know, even though it's being conducted, there is something with between the players that happens that becomes more than the sum of its parts, and yeah, it's very, very beautiful.

SPEAKER_06 25:50

I mean, you have the score, obviously, but there's the interpretation of that, and that's gonna vary as well. I mean, I don't listen to a lot of class school, but you know, people who are really into it can distinguish between different performances of what ostensibly should be exactly the same that's been kind of prescribed, but yeah, I think there's something about as well when you get into that state where you're re-listening and you're interacting with people, the the sense of time just completely changes them. Yes, and you don't know if you've been have I been doing uh have we been doing this for five minutes or an hour?

SPEAKER_01 26:25

It it's really interesting, and it's always surprising when you find out, isn't it?

SPEAKER_06 26:29

Yes, what it does with time things ebb and flow as well, so you you kind of feel like things are dying down and about to stop, and then suddenly a new little thread comes out from somewhere, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, I love that. I love the ebb and flow and the variation of intensities that everyone follows. And I watch birds, I watch rooks at Buckenham Marsh again on the Yeah Valley. There's a rookery there that was mentioned in the Doomsday book, and you can go and watch the rooks. It's not just rooks, it's rooks and jackdaws, which is interesting in itself because it's two species that do it together. Um, but you see the kind of murmurations, and starlings obviously do it too, and these kind of things, the ebbs and flows, and the different ways that they go about doing that, um, and the variation of intensity and the settling down. It it's it's so fascinating and interesting and beautiful, you know, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_06 27:29

You sort of mentioned the rooks and the and the jackdaws. I wondered how much kind of nature and the natural world feeds into your work, into your practice.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah, I mean, quite a lot. I mean, certainly my deep listening practice, and I love going field recording. Um, you know, I've I've I've recorded the rooks several times, and it's always like, you know, how can I record them better? Um, and I would love to spend more time doing that, and it is a thing about time as well, like field recording and listening takes a lot of time. You you need you need hours and hours and hours um to just kind of um you know, sort of be in it, but but certainly along the air, it's it's uh yeah, I've I've done quite a lot from from the drones of the of the pumps that are pumping the water back into the river, um to the birds. I mean there's lots of lots of different lovely birds, and that's an ongoing project, you know. Um the lap what you know I want to get some decent, some really crisp lap wing um things we haven't done yet. Um yeah, there's I love love listening to that, just being just the sounds of it. Um and I was doing a project really um recently and there was um Skylarks overhead, and so I I thought I had this idea, I thought, oh I'm gonna because there's so there's such a lot of variation in Skylark song, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna slow it down till it's at the pitch of my voice, and then I'm gonna sing it, and then I'm gonna speed it up again. So I've done I've done a a few like seconds, like half a minute of that. It's really hard to do, but it does, you know, you do sound vaguely like a skylark when you speed it up again, but there is such you know, it's it's like a little it's playful, it's messing about really.

SPEAKER_06 29:24

I read a really interesting book, and I'll try and find out what it was a few years ago, and I'll drop it in here if I can find it. But it was talking about the kind of rainforest in particular, that it was showing um uh what they call the kind of spectrographs.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Oh yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:48

And it was showing that in that environment all the different species kind of find a place on that spectrum so that they're it's kind of it it organises itself and they you know they stand out from everyone. But there were these um this kind of visual representation from a few decades ago, and you know, the like frequencies, you can't see me doing this, but they've really squashed down everything's people are you know, um the the species have kind of lost their place and then there are other species that have all have died out, right? And it's really changed that um is it sounds wild and broken? Is that the book? I'm not sure. Might be.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

So the spectrographed is not as wide as it used to be. No. Because species are disappearing and then this.

SPEAKER_06 30:38

Yeah, and because there's competition from um from human noise that's happening.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Right.

SPEAKER_06 30:44

You know, when they're deforesting, there's the sound of machinery and all of that as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

And that's then taking up space, taking up frequencies that would have belonged, if you like, to and and they were saying that about the ships, the container ships, um, they're also the frequencies um over water, and also those sonic um scanners that they use are absolutely devastating. Yeah, we don't really pay a lot enough attention to the noise that we were noisy, noisy humans. Yeah. I it was making me think when you were saying all the different frequencies in the rainforest, it was making me think of um the Bacca people in in Africa. I think it's Cameroon, but I think they they're kind of border crossing um people. But there's a there's a track called it's quite a famous track called Women Gathering Mushrooms. And actually, if you if you Google Bacca, there's lots of films and sound recordings of their work, but there's this beautiful recording, I think it's from the 1970s, called Women Gathering Mushrooms, and the human sound that the women who are gathering mushrooms are making are kind of almost indistinguishable from the rest of the forest because it's so in tune, the frequencies are so in tune, so it's foregrounded by something that I think is crickets, but I'm not sure if it is animal or human, and then there is this these kind of vocalizations and kind of noises, but lots of other things, it's really beautiful. You know, you can hear it on YouTube or whatever. So in frequencies, is the first it's like getting stuff out there has just been again because I'm deeply unambitious but very curious. I tend to make a lot of stuff, and uh it's you know, I I got um an arts council DYCP, which was good because it I had I got some stuff together. I've got quite a lot of stuff together, which I'll be sort of releasing in bits and pieces, but it was thanks to that. So in Frequencies is um it's four, it's an EP, it's four shortish tracks that are all made with listening devices that uh make sounds that are imperceptible to human hearing perceptible, such as a bat detector. There's a piece called Glitchy Bat Mix Um that was recorded around uh my friend's um farm in Ailsham. Um there's another piece that's recorded with uh um is it clip that make it um clips uh photon smasher, which reads LED lights, converts them into sound. Um there's another piece that's made with radio, which I'm quite interested in, just shortwave radio.

SPEAKER_06 33:45

I just wanted to pick up on that because I I don't want to make assumptions about what young people are doing, but certainly I I don't know how important how much people consume radio now. Whereas when I was younger it was a really joyous thing, you know. You we had a re I think it had a cassette player, but then it's mainly radio, and I would spend ages kind of scanning for things, picking up uh all sorts of kind of different stations and even just recording when it I don't know what it was picking up, but where it would kind of be a repeated noise. Yeah. And I would record that and kind of I think I recorded a I had an improvisation session with someone and it was on one side of a tape, and then the entire second side was just I found this frequency and I just let it play all that time.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Wow. I uh my friend's 13-year-old boy who um is uh j deeply into making kind of um instruments, um, brought a telly along to a jam that we had, um, and he was saying, Look at this telly. Of course, the telly doesn't pick up anything, it um has that beautiful, beautiful white noise, which I love. I have a lot of tellies, have a telly just like that, and and and if you sit tellies on radios and turn the radios on, then there's something that kind of cross frequencies, and if you play with a horizontal hold of tellies while they're near a radio, the radio picks up on that. So there's things that you can do with this this kind of um obsolete bandwidth, but it's not obsolete and it's not it's always been there, it's so more than human, and I think you know the white noise, the kind of static on TVs and radios, I love it, and then I love it with shortwave when you're kind of wading through static, and if you if if you're listening on an upper or lower, what they call upper or lower side, don't ask me what that means, but you get these kind of tunings, these kind of frequencies as you kind of tune in and out of stations, which you can kind of play like an instrument almost, and um I love uh yeah, I love that. One of my in-frequencies tracks is is shortwave radio as well. But yeah, I mean, I think I mean, as an improviser, chance element, me, you know, if you can you're working with machines that are gonna do, you know, kind of weird stuff that you can improvise with them, and I think you know, any kind of alleatorical play, um, people build machines that are to do um directly with that, but it's great because then the machines are throwing things that are unexpected at you, and I think that um it kind of disrupts the idea of music as something that needs to be mastered. So there is, you know, it's a problematic, and this is probably why most people in the West don't identify as being musical, and the problematics that we have with Western classical music is because it has this mastery narrative, it has this heroic narrative that only people like Mozart get, and you know, who gets to be called a musician and who doesn't. Um, but you know, I would argue, and have argued, that music is actually a more than human phenomenon, it's not something that is just done by humans, although you know, kind of idiots have said that, idiot white men have said that. It is something that kind of happens, and it happens in sonic and more than sonic ways. Uh, but the movement of music and what happens and the things that we've been talking about, murmurations, happens in biological forms, often biologic biology, modern contemporary biology is often described in musical terms because it's the only sort of terminology that kind of really gets around what is going on, and by musical terms, I mean kind of polyphonic monitor um terms, but I think you know, there is um yeah, it is something about music is something that emerges in the world, and I think that's what we feel when we lose our sense of self and we're playing with each other, and somehow the you know, this beautiful music, or sometimes it it's you know, it's it's horrendous music or it's scary sounds that come out, but this expressive, this deeply expressive stuff happens because it comes through us, uh not because we kind of make it as individuals, and it it's kind of you know, it's it's very hard to disrupt that narrative because it's so deeply entrenched that only special, talented and god I hate that word, people can make music because there's some kind of inner gift or virtue that you have, but it's a particular type of music, and it's you know, it's basically, you know, we get triaged into you know, everybody I say goes, I can't sing, you know. I always say, Who told you that? Because someone always did.

SPEAKER_06 39:07

I think we've kind of talked about play a bit, but something that struck me from improvising with you is that there's a kind of and correct me if I'm wrong, but I felt like there was as well as play, there was a sort of irreverence as well that I was found really because it's easy to take yourself incredibly seriously when you're creating art. Yeah, but it was so there was yeah, that really stood out to me. I think you were playing uh using I think they were like frogs, and they were you kind of hit them and then it's a squeaky pigs, like dogs too.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yes, it's yeah, yeah, it's a reverence when I hang out with toddlers, you know, you just can't take yourself too seriously, and you know it frees you up as well a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 39:57

But it's good to be reminded that because I sometimes get I have to be serious and I I compare myself to other artists and think and then when I see something that has I think oh yeah, like it's it can you know it's a joyous thing to create.

SPEAKER_01 40:11

It is hopefully yeah, yeah. I mean it is you know it you know it can be the improv world can be it can be full of chaps taking it very seriously, and sometimes you know I've been in a lot of improvised impro groups where I have been the only female you know or the only non-chap actually, you know, quite a lot of the time. Um I'd really I'd really love to see more women and queer non-binary people doing improv or in improv groups. Um I'm thinking of starting one up actually with my friend Jem. It's really important to both of us that that you know it's that sort of yeah, it's it's that kind of freedom to be to be vulnerable, to muck about, to be really shit. Because I just think actually you've got to do really shit stuff to get to the beauty. You've you've got to be able to kind of you know really hit the kind of bum notes or the terrible sounds of things that don't work at all, and uh you you you have to do it and you have to do it again and again and again. It's so important. Um and sometimes you're just within a kind of environment where that doesn't feel safe to do that. Um you know, and we're all musically well, we're all very vulnerable anyway, when we're kind of around each other, and it's sort of you know what what makes what invites, and I think playfulness, yeah, is that squeaky pigs, giving people and you know, I often run workshops. I mean often run workshops with people who teach music again from Western classical backgrounds, or people, you know, who are terrified of music, so things like squeaky pigs and things that aren't really instruments, and doing a lot of listening and sort of games where you can't think it, you can't overthink it, keep it moving. Just suddenly you can see that they have a profound effect on people because they're freeing, and and that kind of being liberated, you know, that's that sense of liberation of losing yourself is so profoundly joyful. Um, but yeah, play, play is is uh really important, and it's like you know, it's a slippery term play. What does it mean? And I would say that some of for me, some of its characteristics, it's not it's not purposeful. I mean, people talk about purposeful play in early childhood, and I don't think play is purposeful, it's purposeless. Um, it's you know it's it's deeply experimental. I think there's something about kind of friendliness and conviviality in it as well, and wanting to, you know, reach out to each other, even if it's just with our ears, you know, um you know, to share the time with each other. I think that's that's really important too. Yeah. Oh, I was just gonna say I was gonna say something about time. We kind of you you talked about time a little bit earlier, and I thought, oh yeah, it's just um it's like constructions of time. And I think I touched on it again when I was touching on sort of quantum quantum physics, and that that time is not um absolute, which I you know, I know I keep saying that, but I it it is it is really it's really great. So we live. So there's this I I I love this idea that the Greeks had three constructions of time that it's Kronos, Kairos, and Aeon. And Kronos is the is the new type. Time, it's the time that we um we we kind of live by, it's clock time, it's it's we're we're moving inexorably forward, and the present moment is infinitesimal, and we've got this ever-swelling past the older we get, and then this kind of future which we're rushing towards, and it is also capitalist time, it is the time that we are told or meant to believe is reality, and it is the time that we we kind of have to live by, and it's very useful, but it is it is totally dominant. And Kairos, Kairos is another um treatment of time, which is about a kind of really significant time where something changes, um, and it's used a lot in psychotherapy, so it's when it's like that epiphany moment, or that moment of um I mean, I I think one of the ways it's described is when someone um says a death sentence or something like that, or you know, you make a decision to do something, and and time or kind of the future changes, but the the time that I'm really interested in is Aeon, and because it's the time of childhood, and it is the time that it's kind of it is where the present moment spreads out and and it sucks in the past and future, and the present moment becomes absolutely huge, and it's what happens when we it was when you were saying improvisations, you just don't know how long they've taken. It's because we've been in this aonic time frame or this time space, we've been sensing it as kind of aonic. Um, and I think yeah, I think that's the that's the time that it's really really powerful. I mean it cheats death, I think, in a way, it's like got the capability of doing that, and I often when I talk about children because children are always young children, are always described and constructed as adults in waiting, as less than adult. And I really argue that. I mean, my all my academic work is about saying these are people whose knowledge and ways of knowing are subjugated in colonious ways, they're institutionalized, they're locked up in institutions, they're taken away from their parents, um, and they are they are kind of made to think as white men. Um, and I know that sounds really strong, but I am kind of riffing with other people who've said this too. But the but if you hang around, if you hang out with babies and toddlers, this thing happens, and all parents of young children experience it. Some don't like it, some do, but they have they have this superpower of being able to kind of bring out this aonic time and you know, run sessions with with children I have done for many years, and Magic Acorn does this, and you go into space that Magic Acorns is doing, and time is different, it's just different, and an hour session, you know, just it seems like really, really long, and it seems like no time at all. So it is this kind of superpower that children have, but I think it is also kind of what is evoked through improvisation because again it's uncertain, uncertainty wonders and meanders, it doesn't have you know, ambition has a clock on it because it wants to get there in a timely manner, and it kind of you know, so I I kind of I think about time a lot because you know we we understand it as this fact which which actually you know the best of science understands it as something quite different, and I think that is you know amazing and joyful and to be celebrated and also quite scary because we need to have a kind of chronos so we can kind of navigate the world, but yeah, we can open up these little pockets of Aeon.

SPEAKER_06 48:07

So my last question that I finish with is and you kind of mentioned it, but is what brings you joy and what gives you hope?

SPEAKER_01 48:16

What brings me joy? Well, yes, um Aeon brings me joy, improvisation brings me joy. Making music brings me joy. Um yeah, and and it and it's rare, it's hard to find joy. You know, I think I'm kind it's like a sometimes like it's just like a little pip in the centre of my body, like a little lemon yellowy gold pip, and I go, Oh, that's joy I'm feeling. You know, and it's rare. There's a lot of kind of you know, kind of, you know, feeling out for it, and you know, when it's there, it's absolutely great. Um yeah, it's it's uh it's uh it's a funny thing, it's a gift, isn't it? You can't keep it, you just have to be present enough to acknowledge oh, I'm feeling a little bit of joy here. Um but yeah, those things walking actually makes me feel very joyful, and that's very very bound up with my field recording, but just sometimes just you know, closing my front door and just walking. Um just I just you know my body relaxes and I know I've always loved walking.

SPEAKER_06 49:36

We live just round the corner from the park, yeah. And sometimes when we've we've got a problem we're trying to work out, actually just taking a few laps of the park, yeah, and suddenly it it gets everything moving.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:51

And then by the time you've been around the park, usually there's a solution that's presented itself.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Yeah, absolutely. There's very little that can't be solved by walking, and I don't I don't know why that is, but sitting and concentrating doesn't often help. And what gives me hope? Ooh what gives what gives me hope is the unexpected and the kind of cracks in what seem like mighty edifices of oppression. Um it's what Anna Singh, philosopher Anna Singh, um, talks about what somehow thrives in the wake of capitalism, and and I see it, I see it a lot. You see weeds in the cracks of the pavements that have been, you know, they've been kind of you know spending public money on tarmacking um pavements that don't need it round my way, and you kind of see like a few days later things just pushing their way up. That gives me hope. Um, and I think I think that is the way of the world. I think there is always a tendency to for systems to solidify and oppress, and I think it is the movement of things that puncture through that and and leak out of it that that that are the hope and they're the they're the movement as well, and it's like with an improvisation, I mean that there's like a musical um uh kind of metaphor, if it is even a metaphor for it, um, is that you know you you're you get to an improvisation and you get into something, you get to this kind of plateau where it's sounding really great, and you know, it might even kind of get into a rhythm or something, but at some point when I get into something like that, I enjoy it, and then I'm thinking, okay, we need to get out of this as well. It's like how do we, you know, how do we move out of this thing that will become oppressive if we leave it, you know. We get we don't want to get locked into it, we want to get uh get out somehow. I was I was doing an improvisation in the church at Hungate Church, and I'd sort of built up a load of loops, it was all voice uh with a bit of electronics, and I built up these loops, and and it was building up intensity, and I've been singing for about 20 minutes, and and and there was nowhere to go but further up, and I was thinking, I don't know how much more I've got in me, and then suddenly the electronics just failed. Thank you very much, and then I was suddenly kind of my voice was just shot out into space without electronics, and it was like it wasn't me that did it, but I was kind of I'd thought I need to somehow get out of this, and then it's suddenly the aleatoric kind of element that gives me hope, you know, that these things that are unexpected will happen that are you know uncertainty gives me hope in a strange way. Certainty certainly doesn't, you know, yeah, and and and doom in a way, doom and death give me joy and hope as well, because I don't think they're ever the end. Um you know it's kind of yeah, yeah. I think they give us meaning and profound joy.

SPEAKER_06 53:39

Thank you for coming on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 53:41

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_06 53:42

Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 53:43

It's been a really interesting talk, discussion.

SPEAKER_01 53:46

Amazing. I want to talk more about being lost now.

SPEAKER_06 53:50

We can do that. You have been listening to Musing. You can find us on Instagram at MusingPod or Musing Podcast on Facebook. Ratings and reviews are always welcome. The podcast artwork is by Poppy Marriott. See you next time.