Ear to the Chalkboard

by Lily Weeks

PART 1 METAPHOR:

It was rough, with jagged edges. It made you feel as though you were enclosed within it, claustrophobically. It was inescapable, except for small moments in which it seemed to be less. It was frustrating, and it seemed unstoppable.

PART 2 CASE STUDY:

In her essay “The Body in Pain,” Elaine Scarry describes pain as resistant to language in its “unsharability” and “inexpressibility.”^[1] Instead of focusing on language, I am interested in pain’s connection to sound. At times, sound seems universal, as the sound of nails on a chalkboard or sandpaper scraping is often viewed as displeasing across languages. I am interested in how texture can be transferred through noise rather than language, specifically textures that many associate with pain. In doing this project, I challenge Scarry’s notion of unsharability through the representation of painful sound and its emotive impact while conceding that this project is an exploration into noise, rather than language.

This exploration into unconventional sound is not meant to be an interpretation of deafness; it’s far closer to portraying auditory agnosia, which is defined as a “defective recognition of non-verbal sounds and noises.”^[2]  It is not a difference in the ear or in hearing, but a different way of producing meaning from sound. In this way, the project is interested in “cognition” as interpretation and memory (as explored in Sack’s accounts of misinterpretation), and the impact of this (mis)interpretation on the body.^[3] It also connects to Céline Frigau Manning’s “Musical States of Mind,” as I am using music to represent a “feeling” in the mind while questioning what makes sound “music.”^[4]

PART 3 [RHETORICAL] QUESTIONS:

My goal is to use many instruments in an unusual manner to confuse the listener with the goal of making them question normative listening and pain narratives. What does it mean when you can’t interpret sound? What are the consequences of painful sounds? How are noise and emotion related through (painful) texture? How does it feel to hear something incomprehensible? What separates noise and language?

 

 

Bibliography

Manning, Céline Frigau, Tillmann Taape, and Lan Li. “Musical States of Mind.” Metaphors of the Mind.

Sacks, Oliver. “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and other clinical Tales.” Harpercollins, 1970.

Scarry, Elaine. “The Body in Pain.” Oxford University Press, 1985.

Vignolo, L. A., Donald Eric Broadbent, and Lawrence Weiskrantz. “Auditory Agnosia.”

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences 298, 1089 (June 25, 1982): 49–57. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1982.0071.

 

 

NOTES

^[1] Elaine Scarry, “Pain in the Body,” (Oxford University Press, 1985), 2.

^[2] L.A. Vignolo, Donald Eric Briadbebdm and Lawrence Weiskrantz, “Auditory Agnosia,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, Biological Sciences 298, no. 1089 (June 25, 1982): 49–57.

^[3] Oliver Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, and other clinical Tales,” Harpercollins, 1970.

^[4] Celine Frigau Manning, Tilmann Taape, and Lan Li, “Musical States of Mind,” Metaphors of the Mind.