Paper Craft

Listening to sounds made of books in the London Library

I am sitting in the main reading room of the London Library, a room which has been graced by some of the most eminent writers of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am sharing this room with a few dozen people and a few thousand books, stacked twelve shelves high, the uppermost shelves reached by walkways running along the two longest walls of the double height room.

The room is silent apart from occasional typing noises and the odd scratch of a fountain pen across the pages of a notebook from the person sitting across the wooden desk from me. There are no ringing phones or pinging emails to distract here and it is perfectly possible to focus on the reading or writing without isolating yourself with headphones. But a quick scan of the room suggests that roughly half of those working here are headphoned up, blocking out the coughs, breaths, sighs or keyboard clicks with whatever music or audio content helps them write their novel, article, paper, treatise or ephemera.

I am one of those headphone wearers, a cheap pair of earbuds usually filling my ears with some ambient electronica which I find helps me concentrate on the words stutteringly appearing on the screen. Spotify's auto-generated playlists provide a neverending stream of soothing repetitition that asks very little of me in terms of active listening which somedays I believe helps me write for longer, if not better.

But today and for the purposes of this post, I am listening to the 2024 remaster of Forms of Paper, by Steve Roden, a 2001 composition made entirely from the sounds of books, originally played as a ten minute loop on speakers in the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. It is significantly less soothing than the music I usually listen to and thirty minutes which is two thirds of the way through the piece, I am developing a mild headache though this might be because I have not drunk enough water today.

Also, I can't hear any sounds that suggest books or paper - crackles, vibrations, glitches fill my ears along with short bursts of what might be a heartbeat. If I had to guess what 'made' this music I might think it was a pacemaker or some other biomedical device. But not books.

I discovered Forms of Paper through a 7.6/10 review in Pitchfork which describes it as 'an intensely psychedelic listening experience' and 'not nearly as tranquil as you might expect'. Roden, I learn, 'was at the forefront of a loose movement dedicated to coaxing unexpected sounds out of everyday life by harnessing contact mics, electrical interference, and happenstance.' Some call this genre 'microsound' but Roden apparently preferred 'lowercase', describing it as 'small music that is humble, that allows the listener to discover it, to wander round in it.'

This is not the place to start a 'what is music?' discussion, but it might be worth pointing out that the word 'music' appears just once in the Pitchfork review in a quote from Roden, while the words 'sound' or 'sounds' appear thirteen times in the same piece. And whatever it is, it is not hugely pleasant listening, Pitchfork recommending that headphone users experiment to find a sweet spot on the volume dial, 'because certain resonant frequencies become almost uncomfortable if overamplified'.

I've now moved out of the main reading room at the Library and have found myself a desk in the stacks where in front of me is a small selection of the history of India books available and behind me the rows of shelves stretch away into the darkness, waiting to be illuminated by motion activated sensors. Down here (or maybe up here - it is easy to get disorientated) the smell of books is much stronger than in the main reading room and since as far as I can tell I am the only person in these parts, it's easier to focus on the other track on the Forms of Paper album, listed only as 'Forms of Paper (excerpt)'.

Perhaps it is because I know it is only six minutes and thirty-two seconds long but I am finding it an easier listen than the longer forty-eight minute track I 'experienced' in the main reading room. I still don't claim to hear books or paper in these compositions and I don't believe that I will write again to Forms of Paper after hitting publish on this post but perhaps because I can reach over this desk to caress the books on the shelves in front of me, the sounds in my ears do feel more in keeping with the room I am now writing in.

Down here in the stacks I do think I can feel some sort of lowercase connection, a sense of appropriateness to the sound art in this particular space, where for nearly two hundred years paper and books and writing and memories and stories have been preserved, referenced and created.

Music for libraries? Why not?