Montreal, Nov 24, 2018, 1:23 pm (after reading Douglas Kahn’s chapter on Pauline Oliveros)

Action notes: In Douglas Kahn’s chapter on Pauline Oliveros in Earth Sound Earth Signal compares R. Murray Schafer’s notion of Soundscape to Oliveros’s Sonosphere.  While there are many ways to compare Schafer and Oliveros on listening, one of the main “cuts” seems to be linked to judgments of “good” and “bad” sound. Shafer was critical of the “sound pollution” endemic to urban centers and, increasingly, the world as a whole, making Soundscape a kind of critical listening practice in which to pay attention to the sounds around us is also (often) to pay attention to how little the world is set up to take care of, or be interesting to, our ears. Oliveros, on the other hand, modeled a practice of radical sonic acceptance in which all sounds could be appreciated and inhabited and enjoyed for exactly what they were and what they weren’t. At least this is my current understanding of the distinction between a “sonospheric” and “soundscapish” mode of attention. With this in mind, I listen to my soundscape. Then to my sonosphere. I hear the rattle of the window. The hum of the traffic. The sounds I find difficult or annoying, register as getting in the way of whatever I want to be focussing on. Practicing radical sonic acceptance leads to a kind of co-presencing in which my thoughts about what I am supposed to be doing with my ears is of less importance than simply being with what (sonically) is.

Action constraints: The slight headache I am feeling makes listening harder to enjoy, but other than that, none.

daily practiceenvironmentintrusionsound textures