A floor creaks. There is the sound of a shuffling movement inside a room and cars driving past. There is a long sound of something being drawn slowly across a page. It sounds like a felt tip pen but feels dry and lightweight, unlike the wet sound of a paintbrush. It grates a little bit with the surface of what might be paper; not a sharp, high-pitched scrape like chalk but a dry friction that nevertheless causes a little feeling of discomfort. There is a gentle crack of something tiny falling quietly or breaking apart on the paper.

The sound is consistently spaced, and while it stutters and stops at moments as if hesitant, it persists in a regular rhythm. These charcoal lines create a sustained, low-pitched rasping sound, like a steady breeze rustling through dry grass or an unrelenting hiss. Birdsong occasionally overlaps in the background and pigeons coo repeatedly. As the stroke slows down at the end of a line, the sound drops in pitch and becomes a deeper, more tactile scrape.

A motorbike seems to mark the end of the regular long, drawn-out sounds which are then replaced by short bursts of notation. These are also regularly paced, as if filling in gaps at regular spaces; producing quick, rhythmic clacks as the charcoal stick abruptly meets the paper. Two voices start an inaudible conversation in the background in the street outside, and a short electronic tone or horn pulse is emitted by a car’s security system to confirm its doors are open or unlocked by its owner.

Seemingly outside of these early morning greetings and routines, the drawing continues, persistently. It has its own rhythm. At moments it stops for a long pause before regaining pace. Sometimes it is drowned out by the vehicles passing but it continues, nevertheless. In its own time. It sounds like whisper moving across a room. In the distance, more voices greet each other and the traffic noise ebbs and flows in intensity. The floor creaks. The traffic noise grows. The pigeons coo. There is an inaudible sigh in a moment of pause.

This is a first attempt at trying to write an audio description of the drawing process I have been exploring and filming during the residency. In the description I am paying attention to all the sounds: the drawing and the sounds in the space and in the street outside. I was interested to hear how the sound is different to how I imagined the drawing would sound in relation to my experience. In my mind there were more gaps and pauses, but from the sound there is a constant and persistent rhythm which counters the irregularly spaced sounds of early morning activity coming from outside the room. It reminds me of my experience of chronic pain – of never being able to be calm – and of responding to an embodied and non-negotiable time frame that was often in conflict with or rubbed up against that of the outside environment.