Common Place

When out walking I am often struck by the realisation that I have lost entire chunks of my experience. I seem to forget the spaces I moved through moments ago, perhaps so familiar to me that I no longer register them, assuming them to be unchanged.

I took a walk of my own to get more sound footage. I hoped for one car to pass me by in half an hour.

I was determined to make something big from this beautifully simple setting I had been handed. I began to place myself and my journey within her words.

It feels important to be present in my surroundings, observing interruptions that prevent me from entering a state of auto-pilot – instances when I tune into directions or rules not directed at me, alerting me to the multiple modes of engagement within this one place.
Considering myself as a pedestrian in relation to a person passing beside me in a car.

I read through her words and immediately heard it. Her voice being disturbed by the sounds I had already created.

New moments hold focus and are remembered differently; entirely new ones are constructed, finding space in the narrative.

I felt the urge to protect her voice, and simultaneously edit my own findings beyond recognition.

Over the course of our collaboration this short walk has taken on a new significance, becoming a layered and malleable experience, formed of multiple points of view.

I used breaths she took in her recording and I used the sounds I could hear every day, a hundred times a day.

It stretches out and offers space to listen quietly to passing noise, inviting comparison between the surroundings described and those you know personally, observing familiarities.

I found myself getting lost in the process.
It was an escape to a time where it was a novelty for my friend to take an uneventful walk, now it is our only option to get outside at all.