A LEtter to Constable (from WorkshoP)

I have really been enjoying all of the summer workshops, and at Kelly Ann Buckley's 'Deep Listening: Oral & Aural Landscapes – Letters to Constable' we were asked to write a letter to John Constable, about the landscape now and how it may have been in his time 200 years ago. Below is my letter. It is unfinished, but is as far as I got in the time. I'll be expanding on these ideas soon as it has piqued and interest in how we may present, or describe, the current world we live in. But writing about it to Constable made me realise that we must also take responsibility for that, and take measures ourselves to improve the currently rather grim outlook.

Dear John
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It is hard to imagine what the word would have sounded like in your time but I am trying. The obvious additions are the combustion and jet engines that operate every moment of our lives. We hope that this era will end soon and the same aspects of our lives will have more space for natural and other man made sounds.

Travel to another place seems more important than place itself. To get away from rather than be at. Ourselves, we cannot leave behind. A change of scenery negatively changes the scenery. Your scenery is afforded a lot of protection, even this far in the future, but Flatford is a few hundred meters from tidal waters so is precariously positioned to be affected early in any dramatic sea rise event. Maybe its time is also nearly at an end. If humanity ends the song of birds will continue. They will not regale each other with tales of humankind.

Our appreciation of a place seems to be mostly measure by how it looks rather than how it sounds. Perhaps there should be a volume limit on roads, towns, places, as well s speed limits. What other limits must be applied to afford us a place to live.