invisible:indivisible

for Wild Energies- Live Materials 28th April 2022

Annea Lockwood is a virtuoso in holding opposites - in holding opposites and revelling in the energetic  dance of their continual balancing. Through playful inquisition, she reveals that sometimes the seemingly opposite are, in truth- not separate, not incompatible, not even opposite.

I entitle this short talk ‘invisible:indivisible’ in reference to Lockwood’s ongoing recognition and investigation into sonic phenomena which lie outside of human zones of perception (invisibility), yet are inextricably and inseparably affecting upon human and other bodies and beings (indivisibility). Through generous invitations into these ecstatic, sensuous places, she joyfully challenges and thwarts the myths of separation - from self, from environment, from agential processes and becomings we cannot begin to comprehend through language. I’ve punctuated the talk with three questions about sound which arose in me while listening through Lockwood’s soundworks, talks and writings.

The first is: When we listen, what is sounding?

Much of Lockwood’s work orbits the physicality of sound - its transmutation in meeting human bodies, via production, reception and resonance. In her talk ‘A composer and sound artist in the media age’ for Alberta University in 2017 she said ‘by 1970 I was concerned to learn all I could about the many ways in which sound affects us physiologically, feeling that as composers, we should be more aware of how we are infiltrating our listener’s bodies’. In her work and thinking, the human being becomes porous - vibratory, a shimmering loose assemblage that shifts when sounded, is moved and moving with sound. In the same talk she notes that sound vibrations ‘enter us fast and directly on many levels through bone conduction, cavities, liquids…the upside of the fact that we have no physical defenses against sound is that we can feel deeply permeated by it, immersed in it.’

Where modernist atomistic scripts would mislead us to thinking or feeling that; I am separate from the river, the bat, the earthquake, the instrument, the other - Lockwood guides us into an integrated sensation of non-separation through sound with the source, whether that’s a human, an animal, a geophysical happening, a piece of glass, a body of water. The human body, when shed of its acquired boundaries and learnt assumptions can be a permeable space, able to resonate, experience and expand with the sounding source. This takes time. Ways in which Lockwood describes the indescribable of embodied listening include connection, interconnection, recognition, coexistence and interdependence. In an interview with Lawrence English in 2020 Lockwood honours this enigmatic and essential experience which sound opens up: ‘A conduit of connection is formed with a geyser blowing, or a frog croaking nearby, an experience of non-separation - the underlying reality. It can be a fleeting recognition, but it returns and is exhilarating and, I find, deeply nourishing’.

As a natural extension of this openness, Lockwood is not interested in imposing ego-led constraints upon phenomena but instead performs a curious wide-eared and open-bodied listening - eavesdropping into the ongoing life of sounds, curious about what comes before, during and after a sounding, sensitively allowing sounds to be themselves without domination or control. This includes her permeability in collaboration with others - much like she allows sounds to live out their fullest lives, she allows her collaborators to bring their vivacity and personhood to compositions and improvisations, rather than instructing them to set their soul aside in order to replicate and produce set sounds.

Another question pops up for me: What is being sounded where we are not listening?

Some of the sounds Lockwood invites us to linger with and be shaken by, are audible - such as the rumbling in piano strings (Ear-Walking Woman 1996) the gurgle in a river’s voice (Sound Maps of the Hudson 1989, Danube 2008, Housatonic 2010) and the resonance in glass (Glass Concerts 1967-70). Some are inaudible infra- or ultra- sonics like bat calls (Dusk 2014), solar pressure waves (Wild Energy 2014) and low frequency sounds from the earth’s magnetic field (also Wild Energy 2014) which are brought into the range of human hearing. Some are audible but physically inaccessible - found in places which are ‘too hot, too deep, too distant for us to approach’, particularly in Wild Energy (2014) which features geothermal vents, interiors of trees and whalesong. Guiding phenomena out of invisibility, inaudibility and shadow we may become freshly aware that these energies are, in spite of their imperceptibility by humans, holding sway on many lifeforms, including humans. A widening of perception is activated, parts unconscious are brought into light, brought into sound. Sometimes it is not audibility or invisibility that determines whether we perceive something - there are things we are able to detect but which have somehow sunk into subconscious or unconscious forgetting - Lockwood beckons these places to be brought into consciousness, if we open to them. Her engagement and fascination with underwater worlds - the ongoing life beneath the surface of which we are wilfully unaware - is too strong a metaphor to resist - surfacing undercurrents of life that sustain and perpetuate existence, in spite of our learnt insensitivity to them.

Much like high-frequency bat calls slowed down in order to be heard, or low frequency solar oscillations sped up 42000 times to be heard, Lockwood provides a laboratory for energies to transmute, translate and find new forms and presences. Here are some examples. Graphic scores - such as images of strata in rocks (Jitterbug 2007) or the shape of streams (Bayou-Borne, for Pauline 2016), inviting people to recall memories (Spirit Catchers 1974 and RCSC 2001), using recordings of long Pacific waves to determine phrase lengths (Luminescence 2004) or allowing instrumentalists to explore their feelings about what is happening ecologically with insect population (Into the Vanishing Point 2019). Material, motion and memory are made sonic by musicians. Musicians energise and activate the sounds hidden in things we do not at first necessarily consider to be sonic - such as rocks or shapes or tidal flow or a recollection. Each performance will differ, alerting us to the truth that such elemental energies are in themselves fluid, shifting, can be interpreted in innumerable ways while maintaining their essence and the player’s own energy is inextricable from the play. Such engagement with natural phenomena acknowledges that they are verbs - unsettled processes rather than objects able to be extracted or replicated or fixed. Lockwood’s pieces are ‘vehicles for experience’, not set works.

To finish my talk, or continue my questions, I offer up another: which sounds are living lives in the gaps between?

References:

 - Annea Lockwood: A composer and sound artist in the media age - Alberta University (2017)

https://www.self-titledmag.com/annea-lockwood-interview-wild-energy/ - Lawrence English interviews Annea Lockwood re ‘Wild Energy’ at Brisbane Festival (2020)

http://www.lovely.com/albumnotes/notes2082.html - Album notes for Breaking the Surface (inc Duende 1997 and Delta Run 1981)