For many of us our pandemic-restricted routines have reduced the variety of sounds we encounter. Whilst we may be compelled to tune out these newly inescapable noises, we might also try to re-evaluate them. This piece provides a remote invitation into another’s domestic space, though even in our increased desire for intimate connections this equally implies an intrusion as well as closeness.

Stat is made from sounds of my boiler and breath with adjustments to the reverb settings, and forms part of my work considering individual timekeeping based on the body and experiential rhythms. It explores ideas around the levels of space we inhabit, and how our outlook and relationship with these spaces may have changed as we have retreated inward. The relating of body and home in the piece weakens the distinction between these levels, so the body can be contemplated as both a home itself and as a singular system with the mind. 

Similar to the cyclical nature of breath prompting its own continuation, Morton Feldman’s De Kooning instructs ‘each instrument enters when the preceding sound begins to fade’. This creates a responsive, mindful approach through reliance on sensory perception and the present moment, which is emphasised by the absence of melody through a reduced need to remember what has been heard already, or anticipate what will be heard next. 

Our mental state and perception of time are linked through preoccupation with memory or anticipation, so it seems possible that for some of us lockdown has affected our sense of time. Realising this fragility could permit embracing both the more objective, unifying, stable, atomic time which helps facilitate our connections to each other, and the subjective, responsive, flexible, rhythmic time which might help connect us to experience. After all, central heating uses both a timer and a thermostat.