How Will We Be With You?

I’ve been craving “being” in other places in more satisfying ways, not over the Internet, but somehow more sensorial, touchable. A friend and I talked about how, during our phone calls, hearing the background street or other noise elsewhere, anywhere beyond our respective neighbourhoods, was like a portal into another destination. It had become novel, like you could dream into that space of other sounds, even if it’s in the same city. I felt the same kind of necessary touching-down listening to the pieces in How will we be with you?, where current offerings include: an essay by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung against the idea of canonization, warmly read by Desire Kaniki; resonant music by composer Jeremy Dutcher that weaves in Wolastoq songs he himself transcribed from 1907 wax cylinders; collective feminist ululations initiated by nichola feldman-kiss; and Asha Srinivasan and Sara Fraker’s oboe-led piece inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Each program includes a suggestion for a setting to listen to the audio, such as by a body of water or while holding a warm cup, which I found a welcome directive in a period where the energy spent on any unknowns at all feels like it has to be rationed. The sounds made ideas and intents felt by the body. Maybe let them flood you, give you other human voices and the words, and noises.  —Joy Xiang, assistant editor