Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 72

that touched them so much. But what is happening now? People are still
dying and nobody is doing anything about it.”
Scarry’s comment helps us to appreciate the inextricable relationship
between silence and voice in understanding narratives of pain. Puccini’s
scoring of a ghostly note with his cymbal stroke, and the dialogic scream
that follows, alerts us to the interval between silence and voice, probing us to
consider the weight, length, and amplitude of voice and silence, the dualistic
qualities of silence and voice as equal detonators and equal amplifiers, and
their respective capabilities to blind and to enlighten.
Voice and silence are the tools of composers across cultures and epochs.
Through their craft they remind us that silence is not sound’s passive partner,
and that voices bring harmony and dissonance at the discretion of its creator.
The composer John Cage reminds us of sound’s corporeality through his
defining work “�’��””. By considering these aesthetic values we may be able
to reflect and recalibrate silence and voice in our narrations of the painful
injustices and inequities that permeate our times in media cycles. Do the
sounds of our narrative seek to soothe, startle, console, activate, or alarm?
What happens to sound when it scales to the heights of pernicious noise?
We no longer listen. The saturation point no longer affirms the message but
liquidates its power, resulting in a spectacle of representation in which we
cannot participate. The effectiveness of each narrative moment is dependent
on our understanding that sound and silence occupy equal status on the
acoustic plane, and if the sound echoes or remains in a chamber.
Reference
Scarry, Elaine. (����) The Body in Pain. New York: Oxford University Press.
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