Heartbeats seem to me, for many reasons, instantly recognisable and symbolic of their source: a fleshy, bloody, red, pulsing, core of something living. A reminder of the uncomfortable relationship one has with one’s body; a disquiet as to whether one has a body from which they are separate, or if one is their body, or perhaps something yet more awkward and less definitive between the two. Heartbeats might still but can never be still. In the beat of a heart, one’s attention is guided to corporeality and all its gross anomalies.
To listen to a heartbeat extraneously amplified through a stethoscope or speakers is not only evocative of the visceral, it is itself visceral. The deep and repetitive pulses resonate routes within the body that often lie dormant, manifesting in the corporeal to create a sort of inner atmosphere. I’ve always found this to be particularly noticeable when they stop; to find my selves in a contextually heartless moment, only then realising how much the lowness and repetition had taken hold of me. Listening to heartbeats entwines the physical with the symbolic. Their resonances bridge gaps between imagined and real listenings, perhaps disarming the listener to reveal some sort of uncomfortable, internal emptiness; perhaps making palpable the body that listens in and to the contours of itself.
…grown up, you are grown, and feeling stronger, feeling… (2020–22) for four valved tuba, heartbeat, fixed media. Composed for Jack Adler-McKean. Score published and available to purchase through Edition Gravis.
Recorded by Aaron Holloway-Nuham in Manchester in April 2022.