On my morning run this morning, my Ipod played Suzzy and Maggie Roches' song, "Sounds," and I found myself thinking of a lesson about listening and sounds. It's a song that asks the listener to imagine the sounds associated with Matthew Shepherd's death (sounds of the beating and sounds he made) as well as those made by his mother when she found out what happened to him. Something about NOT giving us the sounds but asking is to imagine them makes the song all the more powerful.
I think I might use it with students to get them thinking about sound and all that it offers beyond the printed word.
Trish
2 comments:
That's funny that you came to this thought this morning, as I was thinking similar things while reading critical essays on the documentary *Shoah*. There is a particular way that Lanzmann utilizes sound and narrative in *Shoah*. While he focuses very strongly on the witness as speaker, he does not attempt to recreate the sounds or visuals of the camps of the extermination through them or st any other point in the film (it's 9-1/2 hours long btw). Rather, he creates a landscape around the sounds of memory that scaffold the "what happened" instead of trying to retell it chronologically or otehrwise. The focus remains on words, places, and faces -- as we listen and look and move from place to place, we are asked to imagine in that way Trish describes in the song she listened to this morning. The request is to imagine and to participate. This is what is most important to me-- to be active and engaged in what is being communicated. Thinking about HOW that happens BECAUSE of the mode of communication and WHY.
Thanks, Trish, for the tip about the Roche song. What a great resource to bring into class to help get students to think about sound and silence!
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