It was misting as I walked past the fountains in Trafalgar Square: white noise, grey day. Moments before, I had woven a curving path through the Square, noticing where the sound of the fountain became blocked by the base of Nelson’s Column. This time it was a consistent swish, a rising and falling as I approached and then passed: a fade in/fade out. A turn of a dial.
My last memory of this museum is from eight years ago. I was a different person, reaching out for something else. Looking, not listening; a hand outstretched in the dark. Painting had lost its resonance for me. Why move paint across a canvas when it’s so easy to take a photograph? Who goes to look at paintings anymore? I was in my own little cynical world, eyes, ears, mind closed. John Virtue and Caravaggio shook me awake, here in this place. I have never thought painting dead since.
I am sitting in room 32. I am not speaking. I am listening. I am hearing digital camera shutters clicking in front of Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus. I am hearing the spillage of someone else’s audio tour. I am hearing the door hinge squeak, the floor boards creek, and a man using his mobile. I am hearing the slap of leather upon wood, the purr of a ventilator, the clacking of the keys of my own laptop.
There is so much to listen to. As we become attentive, what we hear fades in; as we become distracted, it fades out.
A school group is walking through the gallery. “Did you have to make such a fuss, really?” a minder asks a student.
No reply.
Phonomnesis 