Voice Recognition
I think I've just pinched the post title from a new Bloodaxe poetry anthology (a very good one of new younger poets but not the subject of this post) so apologies for that to anyone who requires an apology.
The kittens have provisional names - Jack and Harry - nice short names too and they seem to work as a pair. They have subsidiary names of thunder (Harry) and lightening (Jack); from 'The Night Before Christmas', where there are two reindeers by the name of Donner and Blitzen. We're not sure how the kittens are reacting to their new titles, as they don't have much of a voice yet (not to mention care or cognisance of our funny human penchants). But they are starting to speak to us as best they can, with their little high-pitched kitten-squeaks gradually becoming more of a recognisable miaow. Bless them. As to the varieties of miaow which they will no doubt develop in time (along with that putative food-requesting purr which the Guardian recently identified as proof of the manipulative feline nature) - we have as yet to experience that.
In Lorrie Moore's story 'Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens', Aileen remembers the family cat Bert:
'He had limited notes to communicate his needs...He had his 'food' mew, and I'd follow him to his dish. He had his 'out' mew, and I'd follow him to the door. He had his 'brush' mew, and I'd go with him to the cupboard where his brush was kept. And then he had his existential mew, where I'd follow him vaguely around the house as he wandered in and out of rooms, not knowing exactly what or why.'
So no doubt we will become attuned to kitten needs, as a mother becomes attuned to the cries of her baby, who also cannot articulate precisely what is required.
On some level then it is possible to communicate without words; with pure use of voice and intonation. I’m thinking about voice and sound at the moment because a) I’m considering venturing into podcasting, for work, if not for here, and am thinking about the different effects of spoken word and written text; and b) I’m reading a great anthology on poetry and the performed word, ‘Close Listening’, edited by Charles Bernstein, who is a favourite poet of mine. One essay’s by Steve McCaffery (‘Voice in Extremis’) and suggests the difference between poetic text and speech: ‘Writing comes into being through the midwifery of fingers and a trained competence with encoded incisions But in order to reach [philosopher & critic] Michel de Certeau’s erogenous zone [of the ear – one wonders what he would have made of a certain Star Trek species] human sound, like human birth, must pass from a cavity through a hole dilated under pressure’. Put like that it sounds like a vital process, literally – a bringing to birth and to life of language, of the word.
But voice is more than grammar and vocabulary. When we think about someone’s voice we consider vocal timbre and range, the soft or harsh qualities of it, and what response it evokes in us. A singer’s voice is not the lyrics that are being sung, but the unique vocal qualities used in interpretation and delivery. But at the same time, we do talk about a writer, a poet, having a voice (and I know that’s a bit passé, in that a poet needn’t be confined to a particular identifiable style, but it is still a phrase in common critical and workshop use). By that I guess we mean particularity of theme, rhythms, musicality of language, as well as typical choice of imagery and refrain. So ‘voice’ is not such an easy thing to define.
I studied a fair bit of feminist theorist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva when writing my PhD and she was particularly interested in what she termed ‘the semiotic’ – the rhythms and underlying sounds of language, in comparison with the ostensible articulated meaning of one’s voice. It’s a continuum – underlying rhythms and sounds, through to particular semantic intention – that is constantly explored in poetry and poetics. McCaffery’s essay explores the more experimental sound poets – the ‘Ultralettristes’ who moved from typographical extremes to their performative interpretations, and more contemporary Canadian and British sound performance poets he dubs the ‘paleotechnic’ poets.
He notes too that the advent of recording technology served to ‘fix’ these works which were intended to be fluid and of the moment, even while such technology inspired them. Arguments raged as to whether the sound poem could really escape minimal fixed meanings, escape what McCaffrey calls ‘the scriptural regime of Logos’. He quotes critic Durand’s claim that ‘there is no such thing as a neutral voice, a voice without desire, a voice that does not desire me’ – drawing here on Gertrude Stein. One can, within the moment of performance, express and evoke a desire, a desired response. And even with fixed language, the desire conveyed may be changed from vocal performance to performance.
So. If I podcast, I shall bear in mind the uniqueness (and yet recorded fixity) of the vocal performance of a set text.
No doubt Jack and Harry will also be working on this principle.
The kittens have provisional names - Jack and Harry - nice short names too and they seem to work as a pair. They have subsidiary names of thunder (Harry) and lightening (Jack); from 'The Night Before Christmas', where there are two reindeers by the name of Donner and Blitzen. We're not sure how the kittens are reacting to their new titles, as they don't have much of a voice yet (not to mention care or cognisance of our funny human penchants). But they are starting to speak to us as best they can, with their little high-pitched kitten-squeaks gradually becoming more of a recognisable miaow. Bless them. As to the varieties of miaow which they will no doubt develop in time (along with that putative food-requesting purr which the Guardian recently identified as proof of the manipulative feline nature) - we have as yet to experience that.
In Lorrie Moore's story 'Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens', Aileen remembers the family cat Bert:
'He had limited notes to communicate his needs...He had his 'food' mew, and I'd follow him to his dish. He had his 'out' mew, and I'd follow him to the door. He had his 'brush' mew, and I'd go with him to the cupboard where his brush was kept. And then he had his existential mew, where I'd follow him vaguely around the house as he wandered in and out of rooms, not knowing exactly what or why.'
So no doubt we will become attuned to kitten needs, as a mother becomes attuned to the cries of her baby, who also cannot articulate precisely what is required.
On some level then it is possible to communicate without words; with pure use of voice and intonation. I’m thinking about voice and sound at the moment because a) I’m considering venturing into podcasting, for work, if not for here, and am thinking about the different effects of spoken word and written text; and b) I’m reading a great anthology on poetry and the performed word, ‘Close Listening’, edited by Charles Bernstein, who is a favourite poet of mine. One essay’s by Steve McCaffery (‘Voice in Extremis’) and suggests the difference between poetic text and speech: ‘Writing comes into being through the midwifery of fingers and a trained competence with encoded incisions But in order to reach [philosopher & critic] Michel de Certeau’s erogenous zone [of the ear – one wonders what he would have made of a certain Star Trek species] human sound, like human birth, must pass from a cavity through a hole dilated under pressure’. Put like that it sounds like a vital process, literally – a bringing to birth and to life of language, of the word.
But voice is more than grammar and vocabulary. When we think about someone’s voice we consider vocal timbre and range, the soft or harsh qualities of it, and what response it evokes in us. A singer’s voice is not the lyrics that are being sung, but the unique vocal qualities used in interpretation and delivery. But at the same time, we do talk about a writer, a poet, having a voice (and I know that’s a bit passé, in that a poet needn’t be confined to a particular identifiable style, but it is still a phrase in common critical and workshop use). By that I guess we mean particularity of theme, rhythms, musicality of language, as well as typical choice of imagery and refrain. So ‘voice’ is not such an easy thing to define.
I studied a fair bit of feminist theorist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva when writing my PhD and she was particularly interested in what she termed ‘the semiotic’ – the rhythms and underlying sounds of language, in comparison with the ostensible articulated meaning of one’s voice. It’s a continuum – underlying rhythms and sounds, through to particular semantic intention – that is constantly explored in poetry and poetics. McCaffery’s essay explores the more experimental sound poets – the ‘Ultralettristes’ who moved from typographical extremes to their performative interpretations, and more contemporary Canadian and British sound performance poets he dubs the ‘paleotechnic’ poets.
He notes too that the advent of recording technology served to ‘fix’ these works which were intended to be fluid and of the moment, even while such technology inspired them. Arguments raged as to whether the sound poem could really escape minimal fixed meanings, escape what McCaffrey calls ‘the scriptural regime of Logos’. He quotes critic Durand’s claim that ‘there is no such thing as a neutral voice, a voice without desire, a voice that does not desire me’ – drawing here on Gertrude Stein. One can, within the moment of performance, express and evoke a desire, a desired response. And even with fixed language, the desire conveyed may be changed from vocal performance to performance.
So. If I podcast, I shall bear in mind the uniqueness (and yet recorded fixity) of the vocal performance of a set text.
No doubt Jack and Harry will also be working on this principle.
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