Echoes & Affinities (uncovering voices)

Worn out by the day I leafed absentmindedly through the evening paper (1) – with no expectation whatsoever to find there anything remotely soothing or uplifting (2).

 Even before registering the title of the article, the accompanying picture stimulated some optical & memory nerves in my drowsy brain - 4 people standing upright with arms around each other’s shoulders, exchanging gazes : up popped the association with that sculpture of the late Roman Tetrarchs’ embrace, projecting outward harmony in a threatening world. 

An incongruous association (3) so it turned out, when I read the article. Far from being a nightmarish last stand in the face of danger, it was about a truly collaborative initiative from the four nominees for the Turner art prize:  forming a collective in order to become together “the winners”.   

 It made me smile –  a subversive part of me was cheering, happy for once to get the better of my rational self who has been conditioned into admitting that competition can spur people on to excel (2).

 The next morning, waking early and looking for something fortifying in order to brace myself for the day, I turned again to the picture of the "4 winners". I looked them up on the web and soon got fascinated by what I found on Helen Cammock, and more particularly on a recent work of hers: “Che Si Può Fare” (What can be done) - which gets its title from a cantata written by Barbara Strozzi, a Venetian baroque composer.  

 I’m moved when hearing Cammock explain in a video how her projects are about “uncovering voices” and I cherish this particular coincidence. In fact I first read about Barbara Strozzi only a few months ago, in a book on Venetian music (4) , and have been listening to some of her songs &lamento's    (5) over the past months. 

Reading on in the interview with Cammock, I feel grateful for her words on “laments”, which somehow restore the dignity of all those who feel defeated, struggling with loss and longing.

“  I think what I  was looking  for was an understanding of lament being about loss and longing – but also resilience and resistance - lament as survival strategy, lament as strength”  

        

   

    

  uncovering hidden notes

1.   looking back to 2019,  I can note with satisfaction that I managed to curb my day long digital overconsumption of the world’s real time calamities & banalities – finding mostly that reading old news in the paper in the evening  suits me well enough
2.   it’s  a matter of increasing alienation from a world characterized by competition & consumption and by unmediated sentimentality instead of shared meaning & beauty – well, there it is, my hushed lament
3.  unless my subconscious pattern seeking mind was associating the  late Roman empire’s transformation with the current predicament of  a fraying traditional western world?
4. "De klank van de stad - Een cultuurgeschiedenis van Venetië", Eric min & Gerrit Valckeneers    
5. thanks to the young woman at my favourite classical music shop, la boîte à musique,  who, with infinite grace and erudition, delves up CD’s with even the most obscure music