I’m going to give up the exclusive sound nature of this blog and ocassionally write as well. Reading David Toop’s Sinister Resonance has been quite interesting. Though slightly over written he makes the good point how sounds without known sources are sinister.
At the same time the nature of sound is that it appears from nothing and seems to disappear back into nothing. In our minds at least sounds need a tangible source for us to be comfortable with it.
This has interesting effects when we come to spirituality. Believers talk of hearing from God but in reality this must be a scary experience. Seeing must be so much more comforting but throughout the Christian scriptures there is an interplay of God not being seen and God being heard and when he is seen in the incarnation the establishment and the powers are ‘blind’ to him
It probably names the fear of why we are frightened of God. To hear something from intangibility is frightening and though we make a play as to listening to God we are fearful of what we might hear. For what is actually behind that sound? Doctrines and beliefs get their stuffing knocked out of them when we encounter a primal sound with no tangible source.
Yet in order to conquer the fear we need to find the source. Once we find the source we know what the caused the strange sound and we can be comforted. The interesting twist in the Christian story is the source calling after us.
God calls out to Adam in the garden. Jesus refers to his sheep knowing his voice. So the strangeness of the source is our concoction. When we listen closer, get over our fear and welcome the source calls out and who looks for us then the strange scary sounds become beautiful music.