Rockport, Massachusetts, USA, with just under eight thousand year round residents, sits on the tip of a peninsula called Cape Ann that extends ten miles East into the Atlantic Ocean and is accessible by car, train, or boat. Like many New England towns, Rockport lives with its early history. For several years our family rented a cottage built in 1726 by one of the town’s founding families. The original two rooms share a fireplace with a built in brick baker for beans and bread. A root cellar is intact under a trap door under a rug. Tunnels, though blocked up, still exist and connect the downtown beach to certain pre-Revolutionary era homes, a function of circumventing the British blockade of supplies to the colonists.
Weather ten miles out into the sea is taken seriously in Rockport. Wind howls. Rain charges. Thunder and lightening sit beside you. Waves crash and sweep clean.
“On the Edge of a Continent” (length 03.00) is an audio composition of clips from Rockport recorded on a Marantz PMD660 and a ZOOM H2n. This composition included cutting and layering of raw field recordings with no alteration of the sound as recorded. I composed this piece for World Listening Day 2015. Please use headphones/buds.
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