Cube Blog

Green, red, sometimes orange diodes, only slightly smaller than children’s milk teeth, illuminated the sound desks erected at gigs throughout Venn. Some flickered, some stayed for the duration, others remained transparent, keeping their colour to themselves. They reminded me of some equally small lights I saw a few years ago in Paris. While I was at university, a friend of mine was living in this city and every so often I’d visit her, usually when I’d received my student grant. One time we went for a walk and ended up near Nôtre Dame. She took me to a place nearby on the riverfront, Le Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation, a memorial to the many thousands of individuals who were deported from France to death camps by the Nazis and complicit Vichy government during the 1940s. It has been several years since I visited the memorial but one aspect of it remains very clear in my memory: the walls of a dim, narrow corridor covered in thousands of tiny luminous quartz crystals, each one symbolising a deportee.

It is not so strange to think of those lost souls when attending a gig. The concentration of humanity within ill lit rooms of course has the difference of intention, of fate perhaps. Yet when I think of all the sound desks I have gazed upon I wonder if there are enough L.E.D.s in the world to commemorate all the lives which have been maimed or cut short and all those that are yet to be.

http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/gallery/PARIS.htm

Over at the John Wesley chapel and rooms there was an anomaly of peace amongst the shops swarming with debt ridden consumers. I walked over with a friend who was scheduled to give a talk there but we soon drifted apart to chat with other people. I spotted Pash, a good friend of mine. He was standing behind some electronic equipment on one side of the courtyard, close to the statue of Mr. Wesley himself. We had a chat but he and his two friends were providing the sounds that were drifting around the shaded courtyard so I stepped back and listened. Birdsong. I suppose one might expect birdsong to be present in such a place; a place of God and a quiet nook in the city. But I guess that expectation would be wrong otherwise why make a point of playing birdsong here? I read the information posted near Mr. Wesley’s feet. Apparently the noises of an urban landscape are having a profound effect on birds. It’s drowning it out and the birds are losing their songs and thus an essential component of their mating rituals. The idea behind the installation was to highlight this problem and blast some birdsong into an area of the city that, in terms of nature, is sonically barren

This conjured up something I came across in Brussels whilst doing an internship there nearly ten years ago. I’d get off the evening tram a few stops early in order to make the most of the streets and stretch my legs. There was a street I particularly liked and always used to reach my hotel. It was wide and pedestrianised and was home to a café called ‘The Cow Jumped Over the Moon’ where you could sit outside and enjoy a milkshake. However, my main reason for choosing this route was because of the birdsong. It was so loud. Pausing to listen to those tweeters I’d feel like I’d arrived, that this was what life was about- simple beauties in foreign cities. One of my colleagues, however, provided the explanation behind the song and I guess taught me there are rarely simple beauties. Apparently that street was well known for the birdsong- an eccentric inhabitant played chirrupy recordings from a stereo he’d placed in his apartment window which happened to look out on the street. All spring and summer the song would pour out but when window closing weather arrived the songs stayed behind the glazing. I didn’t know what to make of this. I believed the woman who told me but having written it down here I’m not sure if I still do. How often have I seen birds actually singing anyway?