anchoressaway

This is hardware - Catherine Anne Davies hails the "gear nerd"

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I've been thinking a lot about the power and the potential of objects lately, especially the musical kind. It's a product of the fact that I've been recording lots of vintage omnichord (a kind of electronic autoharp) for my new album - a hefty, plastic, and rather ugly instrument that I acquired through what I and Marla Singer in Fight Club like to call "arschole tax".

My omnichord, had it stayed in the possession of its non-musical-instrumentplaying poseur of a previous owner, would never have fulfilled what I like to think of as its "creative potential". It would have likely stayed stashed in a cupboard after its hipster potential as a conversation starter had worn thin.

Instead, in my rather more beneficent hands, it has been played on two critically acclaimed studio albums, travelled the breadth of Europe on numerous stages, and had its own "custom" flight case fashioned with a kitchen carving knifethat's how you get the foam to fit, you seecourtesy of the one and only Mr Ed Harcourt.

I'd like to think that I've given it a better life than the fate that might have awaited it in the hands of its first owner. All that potential unfulfilled, like an unloved still-boxed toy, like so many musical instruments cast aside or re-sold to make way for the next hobby or this month's passing phase. You could say I have a tendency to anthropomorphise objects, or what is commonly called "object personification" from an autistic perspective: where we attribute human qualities to inanimate objects, perhaps in a bid to find connection or attribute meaning.