Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the ListenerSinister Resonance begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location is ambiguous and whose existence is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence in the head, at its point of source and all around. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there. The history of listening must be constructed from the narratives of myth and fiction, 'silent' arts such as painting, the resonance of architecture, auditory artefacts and nature. In such contexts, sound often functions as a metaphor for mystical revelation, forbidden desires, formlessness, the unknown, and the unconscious. As if reading a map of hitherto unexplored territory, Sinister Resonance deciphers sounds and silences buried within the ghostly horrors of Arthur Machen, Shirley Jackson, Charles Dickens, M.R. James and Edgar Allen Poe, Dutch genre painting from Rembrandt to Vermeer, artists as diverse as Francis Bacon and Juan Munoz, and the writing of many modernist authors including Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce. |
Contents
Drowned by voices | 3 |
Each echoing opening each muffled closure | 27 |
Dark senses | 39 |
Writhing sigla | 53 |
The jagged dog | 58 |
Act of silence | 67 |
Art of silence | 73 |
A conversation piece | 107 |
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Common terms and phrases
Ad Reinhardt Algernon Blackwood artist atmosphere audible audio auditory Beckett birds body colour conversation creaking darkness death described door drum Duchamp Dutch eavesdropping echo Edgar Allan Poe empty eyes feeling film finger Freud ghost haunted hear heard human Ibid instrument interior James James Joyce John John Berger John Cage Joyce listening London looking M. R. James Maes Maes’s memory metaphor Mladen Dolar movement Muñoz murmur mysterious narrator night noise novel Oxford painting Pan’s Penguin piano play Poe’s presence quiet recording Rembrandt resonance Robert Lax Samuel Beckett says scene scream seems sensation sense silence singing Sirens sitting sleep song sonic sound space speak stairs story strange supernatural Tell-Tale Heart tion trans uncanny University Press Vermeer viewer Virginia Woolf visual Vladimir Jankélévitch voice wall whisper whistling wind woman words writes wrote Yasunari Kawabata