Think of someone you love speaking to you. Can you hear them? You can remember someone’s words, but can you remember what it sounded like when they said it? If like most people, you can’t remember, what are you supposed to do to keep that memory alive? This audio essay– compiled from cassette recordings spanning over 50 years– details the ephemerality of voices and the intimate power of recording. Featuring both English and Spanish, it follows the author’s relationship to sound, recording, memory, and family. It was created as a final project for the course Media and Performance at Mount Holyoke College, taught by Professor Li Cornfeld, whose encouragement and enthusiasm were critical to its publication.
Transcript
NARRATOR: They say that the first thing you forget about a person when they die is the sound of their voice. So. How can we try to remember?
SUSANA: Good morning, I am Susana Russell. I interviewed Steven Russell about his work experience.
NARRATOR: Susana Russell is my grandmother, and what you’re listening to right now, is her English homework.
SUSANA: Where he worked– worked in his first job was P and R Metals located in Los Angeles California.
NARRATOR: This mock interview practice was recorded on her cassette tape recorder, and it’s not the only interview on there.
SUSANA: ¿Cuál es tu nombre?
What is your name?
VALENTINA: Eh… Valentina.
SUSANA: ¿Valentina nada más o tiene otro nombre?
[Just Valentina, or do you have another name? ]
VALENTINA: Valentina nada más.
[Just Valentina.]
SUSANA: ¿Cuántos años tiene usted?
[How old are you?]
VALENTINA: Eee…
Uhh…
SUSANA: La niña dice que tiene tres dedos de años.
[The girl says she is three fingers old.]
NARRATOR: At three, I was too young to understand what recording or being recorded meant. That didn’t stop it from being fun though.
SUSANA/VALENTINA: (Laughter)
NARRATOR: And it definitely didn’t stop me from being fascinated by the capture of sound. So, long after my Grandmother was done with her English lessons, she lent me the recorder.
VALENTINA: Es la primera vez que creo que han escribido en esta parte. Estoy muy emocionada porque esta vez es la parte que mi abuela Susana va a escuchar.
[It’s the first time that– I think– someone’s written on this part. I’m really excited because this is the part that my Grandmother Susana is going to listen to. ]
NARRATOR: At this point, I was eleven years old. I had enough of a grasp on recording to do it by myself, and to understand its purpose– to have someone else listen.
VALENTINA: Abuela, ¿Entiendes? Si estás escuchando esto, estamos muy agradecidos porque nos prestes esto. Tenemos muchas ideas bien padres para usarlo. Muchas gracias.
[Grandma, if you’re listening to this, we’re really grateful that you’ve shared this with us. We have a lot of fun ideas on how to use it. Thank you.]
NARRATOR: And boy, did I use the hell out of that recorder. I made audio books.
VALENTINA: T Rex At Swan Lake, By Lisa Carrier and Lenore Hart, Illustrated by Chris Demarest.
NARRATOR: Cousin-led acapella song covers
COUSINS: Why you gotta be so rude?
NARRATOR: And even a fictional radio show.
VALENTINA: ¡Buenos días! Esto es Radio Chonkes.
[Good morning! This is Radio Chonkes.]
NARRATOR: In the ten years since recording that, a lot has changed– I’m a part of a real radio station, for example. And I no longer record things onto cassettes. But that cassette recorder was how I fell in love with sound, the capture of it, the control it offered within an otherwise overwhelming world of noise. It’s become a window of sorts now, something I can crack open and get little glimpses of my past, hear a voice, hear a self that’s long gone.
NARRATOR: They say that the first thing you forget about a person when they die is the sound of their voice.
NARRATOR: But what if someone dies before you had the chance to have anything of theirs which you could fear forgetting?
NARRATOR: My grandmother wasn’t always Susana Russell, wife of Steven Russell. Although I love Steven with all my heart, he’s not my biological grandfather– I’m not Valentina Rubio Russel. I’m Valentina Rubio Lopez. So– where does the ‘Lopez’ come from?
EL PADRE: Julio 19 de 1974. Cuando va a tener verificativo el matrimonio eclesiástico entre la distinguida señorita Susana Rosas y el estimable caballero Francisco López.
[THE PRIEST: July 19th of 1974. This is when we verify the ecclesiastical matrimony between the distinguished lady Susana Rosas and the esteemed gentleman, Francisco Lopez. ]
NARRATOR: Francisco Marcelino Lopez Gerardo. That’s my grandfather. That’s where the ‘Lopez’ comes from. Although I never had the chance to meet him, he lingered throughout my home, scattered into everyday life.
NARRATOR: Marcelino, his middle name, used to be the password on the family computer.
NARRATOR: A picture of him sits above the TV, like our own personal quasi-saint, wearing his white cowboy hat instead of a halo.
I’d never really cried over my grandfather until this year. Until my grandmother lent me the cassette recorder again for this project, and gave me a cassette I’d never heard before. A recording of her wedding. The sound of my grandfather’s voice, captured in a yellowing little plastic rectangle.
PANCHO: Yo, Francisco López Gerardo, te acepto a ti Susana Rosas, como mi esposa y prometo serte fiel en lo próspero, en lo adverso, en la salud, en la enfermedad, y amarte y respetarte todos los días de mi vida.
[I, Francisco Lopez Gerardo, accept you, Susana Rosas Necochea, as my wife. And I promise to remain loyal to you, in prosperity, in adversity, in sickness and in health, and to love and respect you for all the days of my life.]
NARRATOR: Suddenly, the cassette recorder wasn’t just a cracked window into my childhood, but a whole gateway swung wide open into the past, launching me into the sunny July day of my grandparents’ wedding and hurtling through the doors of the same church I’d be baptized in nearly thirty years later.
Sound is freakishly transient when it comes to our minds– our echoic memory, or the ability to accurately remember and recreate a sound within our heads, struggles with retaining subjects for longer than 3 to 4 seconds. So, it’s not too outlandish of a claim to say that the first thing you forget about a person when they die is the sound of their voice. You can remember someone’s words, but can you remember what it sounded like when they said it? The lilt of their speech? The rasp of it? The cadence? Its hiccups and cracks?
I think my childhood love for that cassette recorder came from a subconscious understanding of how powerful it was to capture something so ephemeral. Whether it was my own voice as a kid, or as an adult, or the voice of someone who’s already gone.
I started this off with a question, and that’s the answer: recording. If we can’t help but forget, if the voices of our loved ones will inevitably slip past us, then recording is what we do to remember. Like savoring good food, like watching a sunset, like breathing in the scent of rain, we take note, we record.
EL PADRE: Que el huerto florezca, que el hogar se cemente bien, que el templo no se abandone, que las dos corrientes que hoy se han unificado en un solo hogar no lleguen a bifurcarse nunca.
[THE PRIEST: May their garden flourish, may their home lie on good foundations, may the temple not be abandoned, and may the two currents which have been unified today into one river, never part from one another. ]