Some things were more poignant for their absence. The
farmhouse at Malmissole in the outskirts of Forlì, where my parents first
actually met, has gone. The house on via Giorgio Regnoli in Forlì where my
mother and her parents had lived after the city's liberation received a direct
hit from a German shell and now a notably more modern house stands in its
place.

But amidst these and many other reminders, the Forlì soundscape
triggered another response. Standing in the centre of the city's Piazza Aurelio
Saffi listening to bells from churches clearly audible over great distances
gave me a strong sense of experiencing the sounds as something resonant of the
place and its history... that these were ‘voices' from the past - something
permanent, yet alive - evoking a sense of being touched by the physicality of
sounds that others had experienced with the same immediacy over many years and
through some dark, violent times. Of course, the emotional nature of that visit
made me especially receptive to such an idea.

But in response to a flood of expressions of place and identity, and my
own inexorable feeling of being at once earthed and estranged in Forlì, these
works explore the interaction of memory and experience, narrative and evocation
bringing sounds and voices from the past and the present together in imaginary
soundscapes.

In the company of my father (his first time there since
1945), I was astonished by his very precise recollections of buildings, streets
and directions around the city. I was also reminded of my mother's first return
to Forlì after 35 years, where she was spontaneously greeted in the street by
an old acquaintance who exclaimed ‘I've not seen you for such a long time!'