This BBC recording of Diana's funeral demonstrates the power of audio. The way a sound recordings hangs in time: it possesses real substance (every minute of its duration counts), but it's not so tightly anchored to a particular moment the way a video recording would be. With video, you'd immediately be remembering where you were on that day, and then you'd be noticing how Tony Blair and the Queen looked younger, and the Queen Mother was still alive, and didn't William and Harry look brave, while their dad was fighting off many expressions, all of them tight-lipped and inscrutable. With this recording, the coughs in the prelude and the footfalls during John Tavener's Alleluia are all that's needed to root what you hear in a very particular moment. This is a major event, re-cast as acoustic ecology.
And as it passes, second by second, some elements recede while others make themselves felt more strongly. Tony Blair's turn still smacks of comedy, not to say self-parody, as he reads from the Book of Corinthians using exactly the same prosody and phrasing as if he were campaigning on the hustings. In every other way, he sensed exactly the right pitch for his response, but it was the mechanics of his voice that gave him away. The thing I remembered about Earl Spencer's tribute was his bitter little digs at the media, and wondering if, in time, he would come to regret the bad taste that they left. But now you hardly notice them, and it's the warmth and poise of the other eight minutes that leave their mark.
I put this on almost absent-mindedly, and then I realised that I'd started something that I couldn't break off from halfway through. You can't skip tracks, put it on pause, or make a cup of tea. In that way it evokes the experience of being in church as a child: realising that you have no say in what's going on, that you literally have to give time up to something that's bigger than you.
Comments