White stones cafe - White Stones Cafe - retracing Joe's footsteps around Portland

This was a destination I especially wanted to visit because fellow aporee comrade Joe Stevens made a recording here. I have a personal project that involves recording the sounds of Portland and I sought some guidance in this matter within Joe's catalogue of aporee uploads. I have added in some places of my own on this trip, but Joe's recordings have been a kind of compass, a starting point from which to enter into the sonic textures of the island. Joe was known to many in our community and sadly passed away last year... I like remembering him in the places where he went to make recordings and sitting in the same places where he went. I like to think that he also sat and drank coffee and listened to the tinny little speakers, the boomy acoustics, the traffic outside, the milk frother hissing, the change in the till at White Stones Cafe. Joe was pretty unassuming and pragmatic, also questioning of what it is that we do when we make field recordings, he might have just thought "I'll record a bit of this" and thought no more about it. But I like retracing his sonic steps around the island in my own time, thinking about his time. I wonder if - like with me - the places of Joe's that ended up on aporee were a mix of randomness, mood and just having recording stuff handy and an opportunity. I miss Joe and I'd like to ask him about this. As I travel around Portland looking for his places and listening to them with my own ears and microphones I feel I am performing an act of sonic remembrance. How nice it would be to have one last coffee with him and to speak once more about sound art, field recordings, the wonders of the everyday, and people; perhaps in a way that is what this is.