The idea for this poem came to me during a conversation with a friend who is both a gifted musician and sound engineer. We were talking of the differences between analogue and digital and Alastair mentioned ” The underlying hiss of analogue” and the poem appeared before me. The “That Girl Quartet” were I think, the first girl band and the recording was made in 1910. They would have sung into a long leather horn that focused the sound waves to a diaphragm that caused a gemstone to vibrate and cut a groove into a wax disc. By electrolysis a nickel replica was produced which was then used to stamp warm shellac mixed with minerals to make a record.
The Underlying Hiss of Analogue
is the sound of rub of rollers on tape,
the rustling of molecules as they realign,
the hum of hot valves, quiver of charged capacitors.
Once it was the gliss of a sharpened gemstone
cutting into a precision bed of golden wax;
the rush of sound down a leathern horn.
Not like the slices that are cool digital,
bytes that leave sound unchanged, silence silent.
When I lift this spiral-grooved shellac and black disk,
I share touch with the one who lifted it from the press
that had squeezed sound into the hot, soft, dark mass
with the shining, electroformed, nickel mother;
I feel the singers whose breath had carved the sound
that now envelopes me like the embrace of a warm girl.
© Anthony Fisher November 2018