The audience in a recording remains young every time a later audience hears its applause.

A recorded audience is fixed at the age it was, forever, while everyone who hears it grows older. Their applause keeps arriving from a moment that has long ended, and none of those people are the age they sound. Recordings freeze one side of a relationship that only continues on the other.

That is worth feeling rather than resolving. Old recordings of people you love work exactly this way, and it is part of why they are hard to listen to and worth keeping. If you have the chance to record someone’s voice while it is still ordinary to do so, take it, because ordinary is what you will want later.