Project update: listening, waves, unfurling
Back in 2019 I wrote about my hopes for a new poetry project, which I called "that listening space" for the time being. I now call it CYMA, for ease, and as the project evolves. I thought I'd share an update on where the project has taken me to date, some of the challenges I've come across, and my plans for the next stages of researching and writing CYMA.
CYMA (swell, wave, curve, unfurling of young cabbage leaf) is a poetic exploration of spatial sound in different media: the body, urban space, and the ecology of a richly historied coastal saltmarsh. The poems are inspired by and take the forms of the sonosphere – bubbles, fields, and waves of all kinds – investigating environmental sound as a way of knowing and voicing, and how listening remains possible when hearing is frustrated or silence pervades. The project builds on my abiding interests in bodies, ecology and systems, and challenges me to find ways to privilege the aural over the dominant visual in my writing and thinking.
This year has been both helpful and unhelpful to my process. Reduced traffic noise has made my urban listening more possible and pleasant; at the same time, I have been unable to get to my primary research site for months at a time. I've discovered the works of so many artists, those living and those who have gone before, engaging with listening in their work; it's been impossible to meet fellow writers and researchers as usual. This feels particularly important for this project, which was begun in 2018 after a conversation with my friend Robbie about the work of Pauline Oliveros, and I'm really missing being surrounded by creativity and sharing ideas and processes with others. That said, I have been able to attend online events that I wouldn't usually have been able to get to, which has been fantastic. I've also taken solace in reading and writing more than ever before, returning to old favourites and reading genres that I wouldn't usually choose; at the same time, the public libraries have been closed and I have access to even fewer resources than I usually do, especially as an independent researcher without the resources of a large institution. The fields of sound art, field recording and composition have been eye-opening and exciting new territories for me, and I've dived right into them, flailing in my waterwings; I've realised that it's no mean feat to learn about a whole new discipline. And like everyone else, I've had urgent concerns for the health of my loved ones and myself that have blown my creative work out of the water. I've had no choice but to immerse myself in a sense of strangeness and disquiet. At least this feeling is exactly what first made me want to write about sound, space, my particularly eerie site and its military and surveillance history.
In terms of output, I'm generating a lot of material: notebook fragments, poems, annotations, dictated notes, photos, videos, sketches of cymatic patterns. I'll still be in the researching and writing stage for the rest of 2021 I expect, although I edit some of the poems as I go. I've had to develop new methods and rhythms of researching, and to return to old ways that I haven't exercised in a while. I've looked at history, ecology, geology and physics, and used notes, videos, field recordings and imagination. I've also instigated a parallel practice of writing "letters to S" – a cipher standing for sine waves/ sound/ site/ signal/ space/ spirit. In these letters I write to my subject about my process, research findings, as well as the "noise" of everyday life, and then "post" each letter into a sealed box. The letters form a secret diary of the project that is secret even from myself, for now, as I keep no record of what I've written. At the end of the project these signals will be received and incorporated into the final output(s) in some way.
I'm hugely lucky to have this project to sustain and entertain me, and look forward to sharing more of it over the coming months. In the meantime I'd love to hear from others exploring similar territory and can be contacted via my contact page.