Beyond the Microphone: Detecting Essences, Variations and Non-Variations

Katarina Blomqvist

 

It is late morning in the day room. I find myself without memory, as does the person in front of me with whom I am speaking. I am in need of memory because I do not have a microphone and recording equipment with me. She lacks memory because she is an older person with memory impairment. I am used to recording encounters with people using a microphone and recording device, which allows me to focus on the moment, to attune to the present, with the microphone as a catalyst for the situation and recording device as the memory. Both of us are living without memory at this moment.

 

In the realm of documentary filmmaking and the creation of documentary audio pieces, the act of listening during an interview is sometimes relegated to a functional necessity—a means to capture sound and gather information through the sonorous voice. However, when listening is considered a philosophical practice, it transforms into a profound engagement with the self of the interviewee, becoming a documentary encounter that transcends the mere collection of auditory data. 

 

The fluorescent-lit nursing home stretches across several floors. In this corner room there are five residents and two caregivers. The residents are not talking to each other. Through the window, an autumn forest landscape is visible, but no one in the room seems to notice. One of the caregivers works at a computer, while the other watches a massive television from a low armchair. Outside, the world continues to be, unchanged.

 

Conventional interviewing practices usually imply a conventional notion of the nature and function of the self, which can be referred to as a folk model of the self. Furthermore, interviews typically center around the biographical self and presuppose the conception of the self as a possible object of narration. I problematize these conventional approaches to interviewing, aiming for a deeper understanding of listening, the documentary encounter, and human existence as an active engagement with time. This endeavor engages with discussions of representation, performativity, and relationality, while also focusing on aspects such as joint attention to the sonorous voice, the co-creation of meaning, situatedness, and the interplay between objectivity and subjectivity.

 

Her name is Helena, and she is sitting opposite me, on the other side of the table. If I were using a microphone, I would have chosen to sit differently. Most likely, I would have moved my chair to the end of the table and sat diagonally with Helena, keeping the microphone close, sitting close. But now we sit opposite each other, the table between us. Still, I orient myself towards her, now more in my mind than by bending my body as I usually do. I listen; I am unceasingly listening to who she is, what she is expressing, and how—how her speech is unfolding, what kind of person she is. I appreciate that I get to listen to her. I want to keep myself in a state of learned ignorance, trying not to make assumptions about her while holding space for her. I am letting her warm tone of voice affect me—her voice, her tone, its timbre and tonalities.

 

I am observing, but how can I keep observing when I am obliged to continuously store impressions, ideas, and thoughts in my memory? I do not have a microphone with me to assist to record all this. I cannot listen to her voice again in the studio; her voice cannot carry all the essential moments and details of the encounter later on, time and time again. I know that our conversation will fade away; it will be forgotten by both of us because it inevitably happens. Perhaps it will fade more slowly for me than for Helena, but it will be forgotten nonetheless. I try to store the conversation in my memory, to record and carve essential parts of it into my mind: expressions, moods, word choices, turns of phrase, my observations of her, her speech, and the details of her life that she remembers and shares with me. All this activity consumes my attention and concentration, making it more difficult for me to attune to the moment. It alters my experience of myself. I cannot merely hearken to the aural presence of another human being; I am caught up in discerning, categorizing, and storing the appearing details and threads of discussion.

 

At first, Helena tells me that she has just arrived, so she doesn’t know people yet. Soon, however, Helena says that it is good she has been living here for a long time, so she knows people. Different times interveawe in Helena’s speech. Her speech spirals into new topics and then circles back to what has already been said, but every time in a slightly different way. I listen, I attune, and the biographical dimension of Helena starts to emerge like a landscape. And consequently, so it takes, I notice that my understanding begins to take shape, and I begin to uncover the structures of her fractured self.

 

What is the creative continuity of contact that I aim for during my encounters? How can I ensure that my main characters remain subjects rather than become objects in my artistic outcome? I usually create documentary audio works by editing my voice out of the final piece. Consequently, my own voice is rarely heard. Only my characters are audible, even though I have conducted all the interviews, shared documentary encounters with my interviewees. I am thus entirely dependent on what, and especially how, my characters speak. I rarely add a complementary narrator’s voice to fill gaps in the interview. I must manage with the recorded material alone. This approach allows the listener to have a direct and intimate encounter with the characters. My presence does not belong there, and my voice does not belong in the reality of my protagonist’s life, even though I have been the first listener during the documentary encounter. For me, this approach—allowing my main character to speak without the interviewer intervening—is more captivating than other structural and dramaturgical solutions.

 

Dancing! Dancing emerges more and more frequently in Helena’s speech. It takes Helena far back to her youth. Helena has two brothers who play in a dance orchestra and take her along to their gigs. Fortunately, a girl of Helena’s age lives upstairs in her building, and they can go together when Helena’s brothers leave for a gig.

—That time, the time of dancing, was a wonderful time, she says.

 

There is much happening in the situation, yet something remains unattained, something is missing. Our encounter is not recorded anywhere; I know I can never turn this meeting into a documentary audio piece. More importantly, I cannot relisten to the encounter the same way I do in my usual work and that affects me. On the surface, I do not behave differently. I am attentive, I orient myself toward Helena, and we have a shared, attentive space where her thoughts, experiences, and life are at the center. I focus on her just as I do with the protagonists of my future works when I am recording. However, besides having to commit things to memory and reflecting on the situation, I do not direct my attention as strongly toward the future. I am unable to fully ride the wave of shared presence toward the utmost anticipation. This is one of the differences in my listening compared to a recorded documentary encounter. The absence of the microphone and recording device changes my orientation toward the future, toward the next sentence, and toward the very next possibility. The difference is very subtle, but I still sense it. The magic of hearkening is missing—the magic that the next unfolding sentence could be the one that makes it into the final piece. That in just a moment, something significant will happen, and I am listening to the birth of an embodied thought and its articulation.

 

And dancing! How radiant she looks when she speaks about dancing. How life emanates from her as she speaks, how vividly she is alive. I see her bright face, her beautifully expressive eyes, and gray hair that reaches her shoulders. I am so fortunate to bear witness to how Helena’s speech unfolds; it is like witnessing life itself. For me, listening during a documentary encounter is an act of participating in the unfolding of being, of calling something forth, of positioning oneself in openness, of consenting to an indeterminate process. It involves relinquishing oneself, a precise sense of self, and offering one’s consciousness for another’s use.

 

The more talk accumulates during the encounter, the fuller I become and the less space I have left for Helena. I have to start letting go of the things to be remembered, trust that they will remain in me anyhow, in my memory, and begin to attune more to the moment, to the situation, and to Helena. I need to do this, it is my urge. I want to experience the for me so familiar state of being that can be expressed in the sayings like in the zone, in the flow, letting go of myself. 

 

I am corporeally present at the moment of recording, but the listener of the audio documentary piece is engaged only with the sound. Sound cannot be paused, and the present moment cannot be paused. Listening to a documentary sound piece reminds the listener of the nature of existence. In the visual world, impermanence may be forgotten, one might be deceived into thinking of permanence, but sound—fearful in its very essence—brings the listener closer to the unfolding of reality. Sonorous voice cannot be paused; a human being cannot be paused.

 

Vitality flickers; it is present in Helena. I can see it in her face, enduringly vibrant. She embodies vitality. Helena appears very young now. She remembers more, and her appearance is different from the other, stagnant elderly persons in the room. She does not notice the large television screen behind me on the other side of the room. I know that it displays close-ups of people expressing their emotions; it is some daytime melodrama in English.

 

I do not know then, but days after the encounter, I find myself repeating same thoughts again and again, like Helena. I find myself reflecting on the aspiration inherent in listening; how it involves maintaining a position at the crest of the present moment, where both the past and future converge. It is a continuous attentiveness that, despite of including the flow of past conversation, always aims toward the next sentence, the next word, the next utterance, the next breath. In this state, every forthcoming sentence can be essential. It is an orientation in the present toward the future—toward the next thought, which can be incomplete, so incomplete. A sentence that, for many reasons, cannot be integrated into the documentary piece. 

 

I can never predict, sitting here with Helena, how the next sonorous expression will turn out. I must simply participate; be attentive, wait, hope, be alert, and observant. While skill, knowedge, and insight are valuable, they do not guarantee how the interview will unfold, including its content, mood, or existential depth. The essence lies in participation; in engaging with a process that cannot be controlled. 

 

Suddenly, a shadow crosses her face, as they say in books. I have not seen that happen to anyone before. I choose to be silent and let her sink into herself. Soon she awakens from her memories to our shared moment.

— It’s astonishing how much comes back to mind, she says.

I am mesmerized by the sudden emotional change that briefly passes over her features and give her all the time she needs to grasp what she remembers now.

 — Back then, we worked a lot, she continues after a while.

Can listening be listening to possibilities? What is still possible for Helena? What am I listening to if I am listening to possibilities, her possibilities? What is possible for her to remember, what is possible for her to be and to become?

 

My encounter with Helena will not have closure. Writing this vignette is an attempt to revisit the moments of listening that I am unable to recapture. There is no way to go back, to revisit the situation; there is no resolution. There is only the memory of the listening encounter, of the embodied, intuitive, self-other dynamic field. I am thankful for listening to her and for the shared attention, the joint attentive moment we had. I recall her words in my memory; I did write them in me, in my embodied presence, in my multilayered self.

 

Helena rises from her chair. She walks to the intersection of two corridors, to the corner of the living room area. She pauses for a moment, looking out into the corridor. Then she starts walking down the other corridor. Pink trousers, a black-and-white striped shirt. Slightly swaying, with a slow, soft gait. Helena opens the door to her room and goes inside. No sound is heard; the door does not make any noise. Or perhaps the television’s sound masks the noise. All the other elderly people remain engrossed in watching the television. 

 

A documentary encounter catalyzes the situation and brings about events, thoughts, and moments that would not otherwise happen. What between Helena and me remained unaccomplished because the microphone was absent, because the intention of creating a documentary piece was missing? I was there; I shared the socio-emotional embodiment. During the encounter, there was this richness, as there always is. I embraced that familiar abundance and related to it in the experiential moment. But I am unable to ever reach it again via recording. I am not able to create a reflective account of it, of the person I met. I cannot revisit my memories, cannot listen to the encounter again and again, and cannot edit an artistic outcome from the material, slowly crafting an documentary audio art piece of her, of her memories of dancing. Furthermore, I am not able to listen to the audio piece together with Helena; we cannot listen to it together, I cannot give the piece her as a gift.