Ferryman's repose

Though many of us seek calming sounds or voices to quiet our bodies and minds and to soothe us to sleep, our actual experience of sleep is rarely a still or tranquil one. Indeed cultures across the globe have long appreciated sleep as a dynamic, active domain. It is a space of dreaming, creating, processing, and remembering in which the conscious self of the waking world gives way to a very different register of experience. 

This field recording of a pedestrian bridge over a dammed portion of the Salt River in Tempe, Arizona (once Hayden’s Ferry) explores this phenomenology of sleep. Two geophones, a contact microphone, and a hydrophone are deployed to capture the less accessible aspects of conscious auditory experience. In turn, the recording evokes the familiar, yet otherworldliness our sleepscapes and the “clanging” of memory as we move across a world of sleep and across a river of dreams.

Recorded by Thomas Catlaw.

Part of the Music for Sleep project - for more information and to hear more sounds from the collection, visit https://citiesandmemory.com/music-for-sleep/