A Conversation with the Sea

I am about to spend a week away with friends in Suffolk, and I’m really looking forward to it. East Anglia is a place that holds real resonance for me. I went there as an undergraduate many moons ago and more recently I lived in Norwich for six months.

The flatlands call to me – perhaps they remind me of home and the Somerset Levels or perhaps it has more to do with how I felt when I left home and a whole new life opened up before me – I especially loved those four years I spent there from age 18 – 22

The cottage we are staying in is on an estuary – with great views to the sea, so I will be in my watery element. I am also feeling optimistic having had some unexpectedly good feedback on my new novel. There is still a long way to go but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I’m enjoying the praise and positive vibes while they last – I’m beginning to be a great believer in celebrating the small successes and not worrying too much about the future.

I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Maggi Hambling’ s Scallop again, on Aldeburgh beach. The edge of the main shell is pierced with the words, “I hear those voices that will not be drowned” It makes my skin prickle just thinking about it!

I’ve been thinking for some time about setting a novel or some stories in East Anglia so I’m hoping very much to hear some of those voices and have my own conversation with the sea.

Music is an abstract art, but we cannot help being struck, as we approach the sculpture from shoreward, by the anguished cry from Peter Grimes: ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’. It is immediately visible, written by light on the rim of the shell. These are words bound to intensify our sense of hearing as they suggest we listen for reverberations of another kind on the marine air – echoes of ‘the still sad music of humanity’. We remember at once the essential humanism of Britten’s music, its expression of the total range of thought and feeling, its empathetic capacity to celebrate and to commemorate, to praise and to mourn.

Mel Gooding

Notes: Maggi Hambling referred to Scallop as ‘a conversation with the sea’.

Mel Gooding is a well-known writer on art and architecture. He is Research Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art.