I made Chorus after my mum died.
When my son was born, it hit me that he was never going to meet her. He’d have her in photos, and in the stories we tell him, but he’d never be in a room with her. And all the things I’d have asked her, I can’t ask now.
Before she died we’d started one of those books with questions for your mum to answer. We never finished it. I’m glad we have the bit we have, but reading her answers on the page isn’t the same as hearing her say them. That’s the part you can’t get back. You keep the handwriting and the recipes. The way she told a story goes with her.
So I did the next best thing. I asked the people who loved her to tell me about her, and I recorded it. You hear so much more in how someone tells it than in anything written down.
The one that made me build it
At Mum’s funeral I heard a story I’d never heard before. She’d gone down to the shop for the makings of a pavlova. A woman there asked what she was making. When Mum said a pavlova, the woman said it was her favourite dessert. So Mum went home, made a second one, and brought it back down to her.
My cousin’s a teacher. She told that story to her class on a random acts of kindness day. That was Mum, and I’d never have known it if we hadn’t all been in the one room saying the things we knew.
So much of a person only comes out when everyone who loved them is together, each telling the bit they remember. Chorus is a way to make that happen on purpose. Everyone who loves someone records a message in their own voice, and it becomes one book you can hear, read and hold.
It began with my mum, for the worst reason. It works for any time you’d want those voices gathered while you still can. A big birthday. A wedding. A new baby. A child growing up.
I can’t get my mum’s voice back. What I can do is make sure my son grows up hearing the pavlova story from the people who were there. That’s why Chorus exists.