David Owen in the New Yorker on Noise Pollution
There’s an interesting and somewhat maddening story by David Owen in the current New Yorker on noise and health (both human and animal). Interesting because, well this is something I…
Tag: sound
David Monacchi: “Fragments of Extinction”, the sounds of vanishing nature
With the prospect of mass extinction in the news, it seems a good time to reflect on the loss of soundscapes. In Ireland, the corncrake and the curlew were once…
Happy St Cuthbert’s Day with Chris Watson
Today is St Cuthbert’s Day. I must admit he wasn’t a saint I’d heard of before coming across Chris Watson’s work. Watson has had an interesting and highly varied career. Formerly…
“Silence is not the contrary of the Word but its guardian”
From “Lieber’s Lament”, Chapter 6, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., George Steiner: As it is written in the learned Nathaniel of Mainz: there shall come upon the earth…
The sound of night – from R Murray Schafer’s “Soundscapes”
“In the special darkness of the northern winter, where life was centered in small pools of candlelight, beyond which shadows draped and flickered mysteriously, the mind explored the dark side…
From “The State”, a short story by Tommy Orange
From The New Yorker, drawn from Orange’s forthcoming novel There There Before you were born, you were a head and a tail in a milky pool—a swimmer. You were a…
“The silent are never at home in our culture again”
Adam DeVille has a fascinating pair of posts (one here, one here) on Maggie Ross‘ Silence: A User’s Guide. Both posts are worth reading in full (and I must now…
Séamus Sweeney 