22 May 2012

Resonance



My resonating heel clicks ricochet off the walls - brittle ancient walls - as if they had ever not. But this is my first time in this far, foreign, decaying place. Resonating with the street, with the walls, delving into shuttered apartments above.

The towering stare from a woman, a bannered face, hanging from museum columns. I can feel her resonance. That gaze shakes the cobbles I click on. It is a resonance from 150 years in the past, so strong then, it could still erupt. Bring columns tumbling.

My voice, my impulse: an overwhelming desire to respond to that captured resonance.

Resonance creates resonance.

I’m ashamed. I deny my impulse. I’m a grown up - I wouldn’t want to respond to this. Not let anyone see/feel my reaction. Wouldn’t want to resonate - not in public anyway. Not like my four year old daughter who has not learned yet to habitually filter her responses (a development I - unlike many parents - am not looking forward to).

A new student asks me “Why don’t I have this resonance when I speak? I mean,  really speak.....on stage?” I must explain what really speaking is.

I walk home from the Opera House. My heel clicks bounce off an empty bin, cars, low bushes giving me a much more truthful and resonant response than the performers I have just witnessed.

Why could they not resonate as my footfalls do? Resonance relishing the space, exploring the space, echoing in the space; rather than imposing upon it.

Vocal resonance reflects the smells, the textures, the density, the tastes around me. True resonance.