Fencing the Horizon: Sound as Imaginative Event

Abstract

Onto our blank canvas we begin to apply the colours of sound. We employ the word ‘event’ to denote the dynamism of a sound placed into a sonic space, and the analogy is developed through John Berger’s essay, ‘Field’. These events in childhood may inform the rest of a life and work, as in the writing of Elizabeth Bishop, and the trauma of a memory from infanthood. We examine the minute events that surrounding stillness reveals, and advocate active listening to detect them. We introduce a new theme that will be a key part of the journey, the exploration of the power of the written word to convey sound into the mind, as in the writing of Charles Dickens and John Muir.