Leah McLaren has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Recently I stumbled across a file of conversations I’d recorded with my seven-year-old son Frank back when he was four. Topics include his travels through wormholes, why he finds planet Earth ‘boring’, the tragic story of how his ‘first family’ died and how he got his ‘laser eyes’.
It was only by listening to these voice notes three years later that I understood just how precious audio recordings are, and also how under-used. The conversations I taped illustrate the nuances of Frank’s four-year-old self more vividly than any photo or video could. Anyone attempting to write fiction should take note of the power of audio – conversation and voice are how character is built. A physical description tells you relatively little. Why don’t we record more conversations, I wonder, if only for posterity’s sake?
I would love nothing more than to listen to an archive of conversations with loved ones
Preserving everyday verbal interactions between our loved ones is something we don’t do enough of, in my view.
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