“The soul is contained in the human voice,” wrote the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
This resonates deeply with audio biographer Caroline Pearce. “When you listen to someone's voice, and you hear the emotion, it can convey so much,” she says.
Having recorded her own parents, both of whom have passed away, Pearce knows how “comforting and valuable” such recordings are.
The former PR recorded her father Jimmy Mindel’s story of growing up in Stamford Hill in the 1920s and 30s for her master’s degree in biography, and she discovered just how special it was when he died.
“I was able to listen to his voice and recognised the power it had,” she says. “It brings him closer to me.”
She also later recorded her mother and enjoys being able to listen to “the sound of her laughter” whenever she likes which “helps to keep her close”.
Pearce, 64, who lives near St Albans, started working in audio biography in 2020, after ghost writing for a living. She says: “The voice really spoke to me. I find it a fascinating way to capture people's stories and the essence of a person.”
She points to a study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison into how hearing a loved one's voice invokes the same physiological reaction as a hug. The study put young girls through a stress-raising challenge before they were divided into three groups, one of which was comforted by a hug from their mothers, another by a phone call from their mothers and a third who watched a video. The study found that those hearing their mothers’ voices experienced the same positive effects as those who received a hug.
Pearce has made audio recordings of many Jewish people. As the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, she is drawn to such stories and feels it is important to capture and preserve them for current and future generations of the community. “There are fewer and fewer people left to remember the war and the things that the Jews went through and what it was like being Jewish here,” says Pearce, who has two children. “Oral history is a very traditional way of passing on stories.”
Caroline Pearce's father Jimmy Mindel and son Benjamin Pearce in 2007 (Photo: Caroline Pearce)
There is also solace in listening to somebody's voice after they have passed away, when the sound has faded from memory. “It can feel as though they are irretrievably lost,” she says. “Many people have told me how they kept voicemail messages, just so they can hear the voice of a lost loved one again.”
Audiostories also give people the opportunity to be heard, capturing their stories in their own voice without a filter. She has found people are more willing to open up and tell stories they have not shared before. “The fact that they don't know me is helpful. I'm not in their family, so I don't have the emotional baggage. I don't judge.”
This was the case when she interviewed Holocaust survivor and author Kitty Hart-Moxon (as part of St Albans Masorti Synagogue’s Roots project), who recollected getting the patch of skin with her mother's Auschwitz tattoo cut off her body after her death. Kitty had already had her own removed when she was 25.
Pearce said that when Kitty told her this story in 2016, it was the first time she had ever shared it.
“She kept [the tattoos] and showed them to me. The way she told that story was so unemotional. It's interesting to hear the different ways that people talk about adverse or challenging situations.”
The personal stories also provide a backdrop of social history. Pearce gives an example of one interviewee sharing her memories as a little girl during the Second World War: the blackout curtains, shattered windows and being carried into a spider-infested air raid shelter. “I find that extremely moving. It's so important to pass these stories on and to preserve them.”
audiobiographers.co.uk
