Who is Eva Hipsey?
In the fields that keep the Thames from blurting out and flooding the whole flat land of Essex, was where Eva felt at her best. With the river coursing its grey way so nearby, she was always ready to escape.
Most often she chose not to, and would instead listen to the voices on the radio or tend to the weeds which bind everything together down in those parts.
An escaper, but often with nothing to escape from, she was unsure if it was really wise to keep leaving and returning the way everyone of her time was getting used to. Sound was to become her path, and I often caught her listening with her eyes closed in the garden. Leaving and coming back, with watery eyes. She asked me if I could find her a tape machine, with a record button.
Seeing her thick garden fingers playing with the little metal buttons, and trying to press record and play at the same time, I realised I had not asked her what this was all for.
"I want to keep things, so I can remember them later"
I would bring fresh packets of C60s for her and she would fill them with noise. Sometimes, just the sound of the house when no one was there, so she could listen to it when she got back. Sometimes I would find her with bundles of dried buds and flowers from the garden which she would gently roll between her thumb and finger over the tiny in-built microphone, until the buds would crumble into dust and she would have it all on tape. Oddly she never wrote down what was on any of these tapes.
"I wouldn't know what to write" she would say and resisted all my offers to help her keep track of this growing library.
In the fields that keep the Thames from blurting out and flooding the whole flat land of Essex, was where Eva felt at her best. With the river coursing its grey way so nearby, she was always ready to escape.
Most often she chose not to, and would instead listen to the voices on the radio or tend to the weeds which bind everything together down in those parts.
An escaper, but often with nothing to escape from, she was unsure if it was really wise to keep leaving and returning the way everyone of her time was getting used to. Sound was to become her path, and I often caught her listening with her eyes closed in the garden. Leaving and coming back, with watery eyes. She asked me if I could find her a tape machine, with a record button.
Seeing her thick garden fingers playing with the little metal buttons, and trying to press record and play at the same time, I realised I had not asked her what this was all for.
"I want to keep things, so I can remember them later"
I would bring fresh packets of C60s for her and she would fill them with noise. Sometimes, just the sound of the house when no one was there, so she could listen to it when she got back. Sometimes I would find her with bundles of dried buds and flowers from the garden which she would gently roll between her thumb and finger over the tiny in-built microphone, until the buds would crumble into dust and she would have it all on tape. Oddly she never wrote down what was on any of these tapes.
"I wouldn't know what to write" she would say and resisted all my offers to help her keep track of this growing library.
Music was an idea that came to her much later. She had often recorded it on her tapes by accident, music leaking in from next-door's garden or from passing cars. But soon it became something of an obsession. She would wander for hours with her woollen pockets weighed down with batteries, listening out for new music to record. Often on the estates that were fast appearing, she would record the music that would drift in combination out of three or four houses at the same time. These were her favourite recordings she told me and she would mark these cassettes with a line of chalk.
Gradually her search widened and began to involve buses and trains and then on to the use of boats. Those grey waters rushing past had caught her up and swept her out. She was now posting tapes home, sometimes five at a time in brown paper packages marked with her lopsided scrawl.
With no time for her to listen, and only the occasional visit home, I was becoming her ears - listening out, straining to hear where she was, what was around her, which way she was facing. She was disappearing, but getting louder all the while.
Her house became empty apart from my visits, and was by now wildly stacked with piles of tapes and ripped open packets. Dust had thickened and greyed out the marks of Eva's life, black flies laid dead on their backs on the windowsills. Shocked flowers dried in milky vases, soft earth drifted in under doors and scattered across carpet and wood. Crushed buds loosened their seeds and tiny shoots crept up in corners. Carpenter ants kept to their paths and tiny green rose leaf beetles sat on their haunches and considered flight.
Sounds lay everywhere, silent, entombed.
Gradually her search widened and began to involve buses and trains and then on to the use of boats. Those grey waters rushing past had caught her up and swept her out. She was now posting tapes home, sometimes five at a time in brown paper packages marked with her lopsided scrawl.
With no time for her to listen, and only the occasional visit home, I was becoming her ears - listening out, straining to hear where she was, what was around her, which way she was facing. She was disappearing, but getting louder all the while.
Her house became empty apart from my visits, and was by now wildly stacked with piles of tapes and ripped open packets. Dust had thickened and greyed out the marks of Eva's life, black flies laid dead on their backs on the windowsills. Shocked flowers dried in milky vases, soft earth drifted in under doors and scattered across carpet and wood. Crushed buds loosened their seeds and tiny shoots crept up in corners. Carpenter ants kept to their paths and tiny green rose leaf beetles sat on their haunches and considered flight.
Sounds lay everywhere, silent, entombed.