Notes for a “lost” conversation
[Lukas’ note]
The following are notes written as a dealing-with losing the recording of a conversation with Claudia Lomoschitz. It is difficult to say exactly how or why the losing of the conversation happened – but while we thought the conversation was being recorded, it turned out, at the end, that the phone apparently had shot-down the program/or simple went out, maybe due to the cold weather, so the recording did in fact not take place. Only 3 seconds were recorded.
I think both Claudia and I were perhaps at first surprised, but perhaps also a bit sad, as we felt the conversation had turned out well, and a possible transcription would include some nice thoughts, experiences, questions and circumstances for listening. Something worth sharing.
A question emerging could then be, how to deal with, share and cherish a now ‘lost’ conversation?
How does the losing of the recording change one’s attitude to what was recorded – to what was said? Do one remember back differently, now when there is no audible verification available?
While the possibility of a transcription is lost, what is then perhaps gained in terms of a sensibility towards the feeling of the presences while being in conversation – the lived experience – something that would not easily be included in the transcription as such anyway.
This note was furthermore written rather shortly after the incident. But while it is still a complex feeling, there is for me mostly a feeling of gratitude towards Claudia for spending that time, giving attention, and so generously sharing complex experiences and thinking. I am feeling thankful, and perhaps even more than if the recording had existed – this is of course speculation, but also a feeling.
I furthermore remind myself that the loss might also exist as a transformation – that the loss of the recording is also a transformation of the conversation. With the loss of the recording a responsibility to more actively care, cherish, remember and dwell with the conversation emerges. This note is part of that transformation – a not-yet transcription became a note that had-otherwise-not-been.
–
Something Claudia said, that I really take with me, and now passes on, is the question of, how to listen to the traces and voices that are no more, lost even? The unknown struggles or simple unknown living beings that we have recordings of, concept or knowledges about – how may we listen to that?
While this was touched upon in the beginning as well as at the ending of the conversation I find it fitting that the recording of the conversation failed.
–
[Claudia’s note]
What reverberates
I liked to hear how you
relate to sonic surroundings
you touch the back of a person
a bodily way of listening
you feel the body’s breathing
sounds reverberate in my bones –
listening as bodily experience: Steph Ceraso
How does your breath influence the way you listen?
You breathe 11.000 liters of air every day
breathe the air of Jesus
Breathing out, releasing and accepting emptiness, death
Is a quality, a certain attentiveness
fathomable breath
Alba Emotion: breath in in in ouuuuut – sadness
breath out out out innnnn – laughter
How can I breathe slow and deep?
calm myself
I like the way you offer and hold space to listen
How can the people in power listen?
Brandon La Belle: Sonic agency, vibratory alliance, listening activism
How to let listening transform yourself?
How to be open for unheard voices to touch you?
There have others before
Many others
Louise Vind Nielsen: listening requires to slow down
I took part in Louise’s project “radical invisible”
where we listened to lost voices
How to listen to their traces?
How to trace the inaudible?
How to be open to listening as a feeling?
Brandon La Belle: listening requires a weak strength
to let yourself be moved beyond yourself
and to develop a sensitivity for what goes unheard
Brendan Kibbee: make audible what has been historically excluded
Listen to unheard epistemic knowledge
I worked with voices that speak through time
I remember the scores for listening you wrote
listen with your secret pain
listen with your movements
I moved backwards
to listened with my back
Birds chirp, do you see where they live?
I listen to the cars driving by
to a bike, and a song
We share our breath with trees
to listen to a tree, is to listen through elongated time,
to listen to seasons and imagine blossoming beyond winter
I like that we did not record the conversation
although I would have loved to revisit thoughts, smiles
and a language to come
I thank you for opening up my perception towards listening again
My eyes make it difficult for me to listen
they are all over the place
and take in every information
To close my eyes
is to be open to voices
to let myself be touched
The conversation took place in two parts. The first inside the ‘vault room’ at Art Hub Copenhagen, where we came to talk about clouds, and therefore stop the recording to continue a second part of the conversation outside in the sun.
[Photo: the place where we sat outside for the second part of the conversation – the site for losing the recording.]
