Sounding The Event: Escapades In Dialogue And Matters Of Art, Nature And Time

Sounding the Event Sounding the Event Escapades in dialogue and matters of art, nature and time Yve Lomax 1 I.B. T A U R I S L O N D O N . N E W Y O R K ~ Published in 2005 by 1.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright O 2005 Yve Lomax The right of Yve Lomax to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 1 85043 673 8 EAN: 978 1 85043 673 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Challenge by A. & D. Worthington, Newmarket, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Contents Acknowledgements A ZittIe note A difficult beginning A twittering noise A single grain of corn and a song of immanence A passage of time and a present moment that doesn't easily slip by Listening to it happen An impossible refrain Dancing to the tune of the infinitive Echoes Fortuity Epilogue Notes Index: Encounters with proper names vii ix Acknowledgements Many thanks to Jemirna Hopley for No 2 Los Milanos without which there would not have been, for this book, the twittering-tree. A special thanks to Philippa Brewster for her enthusiasm. And more than thanks to Vit Hopley for all the time and encouragement given. A little note For some time now I have been bothered by the question of what constitutes an event. Yes, I have been bothered and the bother has made me prick up my ears to listen out for theories of the event. I have been listening, but I've also been looking, and in listening and looking I have found that the bother has brought wonder to me. Oh yes, the question of what constitutes an event has made me wonder, made me wonder about time, about theory, about sound and many other things besides. There is no denying it, the question of the event has stirred my thinking. A difficult beginning From the look on her face I can tell she knows it isn't going to be a good start. I could say it is written .ll over her face. Or is it? Maybe there is nothing to read, and perhaps it is this that seems so telling. And before I can tell of what is to happen next an old expression of my mother's butts in. -'She? Who is she - the cat's mother?' Once again I am being told that it is disrespectful to say she without first having spoken a proper name. To be spoken of as she, as merely she, is degrading. She is no more than the cat's mother. But wait, doesn't this imply that the feminine pronoun 'she', along with the cat's mother, are to be ranked lower and as suc