The Space Behind Words

On Saturday evening, Rachel, Jean and I (along with Rachel's lovely friends H & R) met up for a beer and a bite to eat before going to see The Space Behind Words being performed at Wilton's Music Hall as part of the Spitalfields Festival. This consisted of two pieces of spoken word (by Alistair Appleton) and choral music (by Tazul Tajuddin and Jeremy Thurlow), with a subtle electronic accompaniment and an imposing video backdrop.

"The sound of silence is that constant high-pitched ringing that we hear deep inside our head. You can catch it in the silence of a bedroom in a strange country house, or deep underwater in a deserted swimming pool. And I find it rings particularly loud after a night out dancing."

The first piece was Tajuddin's In Liquid Praise Of Sound Refraining. It explored the relationship between meditation, sound and water. As someone who counts swimming, listening and thinking amongst life's primary pleasures, this was fertile territory for enjoyment. I was particularly taken by Alistair's description of shenpa and shenlok, which I found myself relating to my recent thoughts on choice and anxiety.

Musically it was austere and marvellously resonant. If I was going to do one of my usual flippant comparisons, I'd probably say something about it sounding rather like Arvo Pärt and Mira Calix interpreting a Vorticist tone poem and then jumping into an ice-cold plunge pool together. The projection of water-based images onto four floaty, diaphanous curtains behind the performers rounded it off to perfection.

"When you slow down a choir of crickets to a human speed - that is, by the ratio of a cricket's life to a human's - then it sounds like an angelic choir, singing glory, bathed in light. What if we did that every evening? Emptied our throats of words... and sang. At sunset. Together."

The second piece was Thurlow's A Sudden Cartography Of Song, with Alistair's text covering the inter-connection of words, music, birdsong and deaf-signing. I learnt a lot from this piece, such as the three stages of song learning in newly hatched birds (subsong, plastic song & crystallised song) and the fact that deaf-signing operates entirely in the present tense. Its startlingly graphic concepts and images were matched by the images projected onto the rear wall of the stage.

Musically I thought this piece was a little more conventional and less consistent than its predecessor, but then I usually need to hear this kind of music several times before I start to get to grips with it. Having said that, the middle section (based on Shelley's Ode To A Skylark), with its insistent male voices and soaring soprano perfectly complimenting the video backdrop of birds flocking at sunset was stunningly beautiful.

"Once a year in summer, the Wordless Folk come together in a great silent gathering under the sky, chuckling with their hands and wreathing their faces with delighted smiles, unpacking picnics, laying out rugs. When everyone has arrived and the sun has begun to sink behind the mountains - they sing."

I have to say a few words about the venue too. I've been vaguely aware of Wilton's for a while, but even a cursory reading of its website beforehand didn't prepare me for the impact of encountering the place for the first time. It's the world's oldest surviving nineteenth century music hall. Hidden down a small alleyway off Cable Street, its exterior is seriously derelict to an extent that would normally cause you to walk straight by, assuming it to be a wreck awaiting demolition.

Inside, though much of the original decor survives, it's pretty much a shell of a building. It provided a superb environment for these two performances: a dignified space whose own history (and perilous ongoing existence) enhanced the words and music without ever overshadowing them. Post-show drinks were served upstairs in a bare room whose plasterboard ceiling had long since shuffled off this mortal coil, exposing the patchy floorboards of the room above.

I'm so glad I went. Apparently Alistair's rather pleased with it too. It's interesting to read about so many last-minute hitches, because the end result was all but flawless. It was everything you'd want from such an event: thought-provoking, entertaining, awe-inspiring and hugely inspirational. If it was being performed again, I'd go tomorrow. Here's hoping that the tentative talk of a streaming online version might come to fruition.

Posted by Hg on Monday 11 June 2007 at 12:27.
Received 2 comments so far.

I'm so glad I went too. It was just lovely, wasn't it? I woke up the next morning feeling full of peace and happiness - I'm sure it was the music! Thanks for all the great links here.

Comment by Jean on Monday 11 June 2007 at 19:32.

Thanks for such a wonderful write up.

Sadly, I have to fess up that the one fact you learnt (that sign language only has a present tense) turns out to not to be true. Eek. Thanks to a sympathetic sign language translator for pointing this inaccuracy out. Still it's a beautiful idea which lead to most of the end of the piece's composition, so let's put it down to fortuitous inaccuracy.

It also made me think of this bit of Bernadette Mayer:

"Write about a place you know: a streetcorner, a pond, a phonebooth, a river bed, whatever. Bring to it everything you know or can know about the place, from its most distant past to the most recent thing you can remember about it. If you haven't got the time or inclination to research all about the place's deep past, make it up yourself, but keep in mind the general sorts of changes that the earth has gone through in the last billion years or so."

Comment by Alistair Appleton on Saturday 30 June 2007 at 13:20.

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