(disclaimer: I think I was more about digesting and mixing
the text assigned for the class into the thoughts I have(partly because I have
fever right now and everything that I read kinda mingles together), so if I
seem to misrepresent what the text said or talk about them too little, don’t
hesitate to point out and/or fill in. Thanks J
)
*
I think about Sound a lot. Everybody is surrounded by Sound
all the time. Some sound is Noise, some sound is Music, Some Language. I walk
by a group of Asian people I wasn’t paying attention to, and I accidentally
eavesdrop on their conversation in Korean about the white kids in the class they
hate. Sometimes it’s Chinese and I do not understand what they are saying. They
are just noise to me.
The thought of Sound-language depresses me sometime.
I sometime feel paranoid about the sound that I make. I
worry if I am making noise and everyone is nodding/pretending to understand
because they are nice. Sometimes I feel like I’m a goldfish in a tank, trying
to make sound but can’t. I open my mouth and maybe a few bubbles arise. My mumble
is my bubble.
초혼(招魂)
산산이 부서진 이름이여!
허공 중(虛空中)에 헤어진 이름이여!
불러도 주인(主人) 없는 이름이여!
부르다가 내가 죽을 이름이여!
심중(心中)에 남아 있는 말 한 마디는
끝끝내 마저 하지 못하였구나.
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
붉은 해는 서산(西山)
마루에 걸리었다.
사슴의 무리도 슬피 운다.
떨어져 나가 앉은 산(山) 위에서
나는 그대의 이름을 부르노라.
설움에 겹도록 부르노라.
설움에 겹도록 부르노라.
부르는 소리는 비껴 가지만
하늘과 땅 사이가 너무 넓구나.
선 채로 이 자리에 돌이 되어도
부르다가 내가 죽을 이름이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
사랑하던 그 사람이여!
Like the poem above that cannot be read by people who cannot
read Korean, Noise is indecipherable. Noise is non-symbol, the lacking
interiority/meaning.
The poem above is written in Japanese occupation era during
which Korea was a colony of Japan. The poem is about a Korean ritual called 초혼 (cho-hon (I think Romanization is also interesting regarding
the issue of representation, commodity that Fred Moten speaks of)), which is a
ritual that is performed by the closest friend/lover who is attending the
passing of a person right after the person draws his/her last breath. During this
ritual, the friend/lover shout out the name of the person passing away at the
top of his/her lung three times, hoping to bring back the soul into the body of
the dying person.
The poem takes place after the ritual, after its failure which
posits the shouting of the name a mere Noise, as the name is no longer
possessed. It is empty.
산산이 부서진 이름이여!
허공 중(虛空中)에 헤어진 이름이여!
O the Name that is
broken into pieces!
The name that shredded
into mist in the midst of empty air!
Not to go on about this Korean poem that potentially has
connection only in my brain, but what I find interesting in the poem is that there
is/was never a person in the poem. The lamentation just orients around the name
and the loss of it, the language becoming noise that floats and dissipates into
the air. And the poem itself tries to be
a shout with its exclamation marks.
부르는 소리는 비껴 가지만
하늘과 땅 사이가 너무 넓구나.
The sound I call out floats
along
Yet the sky and the
land are too far apart
The Name becomes Past tense, even though the sound is
present, floating.
The substance body of the person is lying there, yet the
name, the meaning is shredded, turning into a thing of a past that no longer
exists in present moment. The ghost of the name, the noise will float, but only
to linger in the limbo, between the sky and the land.
Often the time pleasant materiality of sound, music can signify
transcendence (meaning) but yet, in this poem, since the name is shouted,
screamed with urgency, it just becomes a noise. The noise cannot reach the
sky/heaven/transcendence, bound down with the materiality of noise.
What a noise.
What is noise.
Some Korean Patriotic lit. criticism, which is a prominent genre
in Korean literary critic circle, “deciphers” this poem as the ode to Korea,
the land lost, the language lost (Japanese emperor decreed a law that bans
speaking and writing in Korean in public sphere during Japanese occupation era).
They might be on to something although I’m opposed to making the poem into
positive location of such “meanings” as the emptiness of the poem which is all
exclamation and lamentation without recipient is what makes it interesting; Noise
is an object, while Language implies some subjectivity, control, the Authorial
Intention. Name and Language is Power. Possession.
My friend jokingly said Korean alphabets looks like sticks,
circles, and boxes. He is right. They are.
Alexandra Wallace says Asians sound like “Chingchong
Linglong Tingtong”. She is kinda right.
Interiority is something that can be possessed by Language,
Standard English. Likewise, “Who can afford sincerity? It is an expensive
monocle.” (from Xeclogue by Lisa Robertson)
Performance is one mode to respond to the Mainstream
narrative that strips away the possibility of interiority from the
non-mainstream narrative.
In this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA
the Asian man, by utilizing his exaggerated accent, his gender (and
objectification of Alexandra Wallace), imposing false interiority/meaning in
ChingChong language, disrupts the power dynamic.
I first encountered
English as noise. I had to decipher it, however. The system of economy in which
Korea depends on export to America demands it. Korea has to be part of the network of English.
In the classroom where 60 kids are filling in the room size
barely bigger than my apt livingroom, we would listen to the noise of English
and write down what we could get out of it.
English was given interiority, as if a priori.
I think I connect this idea to the line in In the Break, “The
value of the sign, tis necessary relation to the possibility of (a universal
science of and a universal) language, is only given in the absence or
supercession of, or the abstraction from, sounded speech its essential
materiality—its essential materiality is rendered ancillary by the crossing of
an immaterial border or by differentializing inscription”
Koreans do have their version of ChingChong; Koreans do joke
about how American sounds like “shala shala” , yet if an American approaches
them in subway asking for direction, they get visibly embarrassed that they cannot
speak the language, and often run away (I’m not kidding). Universal language of English is just something
you should automatically know, not the sound one has to register before understanding
it.
Before moving on to Tracie Morris, I think I want to point
out one more thing about Korean education of English since it seems to reveal so
much about the power of abstract universality. The English speaker in the
recorded cassette tape was also all white, and English textbook never mentioned
of race. Every characters in the textbook wore same style of clothes (tshirt,
sweat shirt, jeans), and of course were gender normative(I remember blond “Susan”
with pony tail, skirt who hangs out with “Bob” who wears baseball hat) ,
everybody belonged in the same symbolic network of singular America in Korean English
text book.
Although it is ridiculous I feel like this is also relevant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JhuOicPFZY
In this video, Peter, by obtaining the common symbol/indicator--
the mustache – for Italian, assumes that
he has entered the symbolic network, Language and thinks he can speak Italian. The materiality of certain symbol replaces the
non-mainstream language because they are the same exchange value. Maybe I am
making a stretch, but I don’t think it is not an accident that this event takes
place in Italian deli store.
Then where does minor language/symbolic network dwells in
the enormity of mainstream language, in which they are no more than noise,
substance, mustache/chinky eyes and etc.
Another example that shows the abstract power of Universal
language is Chinese government enforcing the law that requires that the
minority group use Mandarin, the mainstream Chinese language, except in the
tourist town. In the presence of tourist, they can use their exotic dialect, where their
language is commodity.
This video is another good one that points out the nature of
this industry: the mmhmm, as it becomes empty noise, ornament, it becomes a
commodity, and anonymous laughter(that is devoid or race, it is universal
laughter) can be added to complete its consumption by the middle-upper class watcher.)
I see that Tracie Morris is resisting such abstracted power
of Universal English that seemingly exists a priori, ahistorical. She repeats “It all started when we were
brought here as slaves from Africa”, which seems to represent a common narrative
that seems empty, just stating a fact, like the line in textbook. Yet the way
she stutters, repeats, the materiality of the word, her tonality becomes more
prominent, and the interaction of different elements in her speech overrides
the anonymity of “we” and the flatness of the sentence. The sentence is no
longer easily digested as it would have been on a textbook which invests a
chapter or less about slavery issue.
Also, Morris resists the issue of representation, the plethora
of “Nonfiction” that supposedly delivers the experience to the readers as long
as they are willing to pay for the paperback price with her “Coda to my great
grand aunt meets a bush supporter”. Because of the title that seems to depict
specific anecdote, I expected narrative in this piece, yet Morris repeats the
word “Jesus” in different notes, rhythm. Her performance does not lend itself
to the audience in the way that those commercial memoirs does.
The inconsistency of the rhythm and notes make an opposition
to “pleasant music” which can be commodified, reproduced too. (maybe I’m
bringing in too much family guy, but I like reading that show :P I find this
clip to be playing with the unpleasant noise and the content (“guilty”) can
indicate homosexual orientation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zDygujgj4
)The performance of Morris cannot be separated from her presence in the pace,
her speaking through microphone.
To go back to my self-indulgent anecdotes (which I hope are
relevant) :
Back in Texas, my Indian friend can speak in various “race”,
and he used to prank call business esstablishments in his white, black, asian and indian voices to see how
different reaction he could get. He learned all those accents growing up as
Indian American under his parents, first generation immigrants. His mother
worked at factory and she learned how to speak English through the black
coworker. My friend tells me how he enjoys watching people getting perplexed at
the moment she opens her mouth, speaking “ghetto”.
“Why do you talk like that?!” they would ask, since her
presence and her speech seem so contrary, irreducible to the abstract
body/archetype of Indian woman.
Last summer, I was told that my Korean sounds like Chinese
immigrant’s by some random Korean lady in Korea.
I think about Sound a lot:
Sound is outrageous.
Poetry is outrageous.
Drama is necessary.
Exhibitionism is necessary.
But let's go back to our initial question: What is Sound? What is noise?
But let's go back to our initial question: What is Sound? What is noise?
Thoughts?
