Sonic Thinking

To anyone interested in the semiotics of sounds , written text does poses a delicate problem. Text is a silent document. It is visible and not audible. Reading can hardly give us a primary experience of sound. Hearing someone speak does open us to the orders of sound and if the speaker and the listens are embedded in a common sound archive come to understanding. A written text does not do away with the sonic experience of the text. It abstracts it but does has a life of its own although distanced from the reader. Here the reader has to be a listener. As long as writing puts our speaking into alphabetized words, the orders sound remains within the written word. Here, I am trying to engage into sonic thinking. Sonic thinking takes us into the orders of sound.

To do sonic thinking, we have the challenge to bracket the meaning dimension of the word and attempt to break open the order of sound embedded in the writing. The order of sounds might open us several relationships that are hidden by over attention to the semantic dimension of the text. Sonic thinking thus, takes us into a depth, were thought leapfrogs, mind zigzags. Yet paradoxically, we still return to the semiosis of the sound that opens us a new level of meaning as well as being in the word.

Sonic thinking, therefore, is not linear and sustained by clarity. It remains vague and ambiguous. Sonic thinking allows us to be summoned by the orders of sounds. It is mixillogic and mutant-textural. It is an experience into simultaneity and has lots to do with temporal unfolding. Entering into the orders of the sound, we have to remember that we enter corporeal and auditory experience. This means sonic thinking is deeply sensual. This also means, we enter the sensorium that remains in adequately unaddressed by our writing world. The sonorous world that we enter opens us to the sonic conditions and orders of sounds that remain lost in the verbal, logical, intellectual world of our everyday experience.

The complexity of the orders of sound takes us into the immanence of the sounds and their play that produces their substance. The linguistic semiotics of Ferdinand Saussure opens a window on dynamic play of sounds. The order of sounds belongs to the signified and seeks the primordial thin signified away from the think signified of our linguistic order. The thin signified also arises out of the Saussurian play of differential relations. This play is constituted by different sonic elements that constitute each other through a relation of difference. Hence, instead of attaching ourselves to the thick signified, we strive to enter the play of sonemes of sounds. Sonemes produce assemblages of sound that generate the order of sound. Sonemes, being sonic elements, come together to build complex sounds, which then build several orders of sounds spinning reverberation meanings, emotions, and affects. This means sounds can also be political and move us to act.

We, thus, have the challenge to get away from the logocentricity of the word and come to the order of sounds. This means we have to listen. Our body is listening. We listen corporeally. Hence, we have the challenge to listen deeply. Such a listening can transform our way of being in the world. The sonic possible worlds/ archives have a lot to offer us. These archives can surprise us and open the unfamiliar. We may be enabled to hear the inaudible. Listening, therefore, opens us to the possibility, impossibility and actuality.

Sonic thinking, thus, begins with listening. Without listening, we have no sonic thinking. Sonic thinking has no closure. There is no end point. It stays always open. It is horizontal as well as vertical without being hierarchical. It is fragmented rising from the fragments of listening. We can only listen fragmentily . No one can listen comprehensively. There is always more listening to be done. Hence, the semiosis of sound is never closed. It stays undecided beyond closure. It is our listening that opens several horizons of the orders of the sound. Our listening in some way gives voice to the sounds that otherwise stay in silence. Listening makes the inaudible hearable. Sonic thinking is porous. It flows into different orders and opens other dimensions to our thinking. If writing brings us to reading, sounds bring us to listening. Our active and creative reading of the text is deconstructive. In the same way, active and creative listening can deconstruct the orders of sounds. Sonic thinking therefore is active and creative listening. Such a thinking is unstoppable because the archive of sounds is inexhaustible .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

GREETINGS

Attention is a generous gift we can give others.

Attention is love.

- Fr Victor Ferrao