Composition Research Continued
In more recent European history however, Corvids have become more associated with thievery and death, most likely due to their scavenging traits and their ability to “engage in mourning rituals when a member of their flock dies” (Dangers, 2022). In recent history a group of crows has even been referred to as a ‘murder’!! In Richard Harris Barham’s 19th century poem ‘The Jackaw of Rheims’ the Jackdaw is portrayed as a scavenging thief that takes off with the Cardinal’s precious ring. Upon returning it, the bird becomes a beacon of divine retribution, and a warning against the temptations of material possessions, human vanity and corruption.
If any one lied,–or if any one swore,–
Or slumber’d in pray’r-time and happen’d to snore,
That good Jackdaw
Would give a great “Caw!” (Barham, 1837)
In light of the absolved Jackdaw’s newfound piety, it is made a saint by the poem’s end and canonised by the name of Jim Crow. This coincides with the same period of time in which the term ‘Jim Crow’, popularised by Thomas Dartmouth Rice in his blackface performances, was being used as a collective racial epithet for black people. There is no direct evidence that shows an intentional link between Barham’s ‘Jim Crow’ and Rice’s character, but the resonance is an interesting one to consider. In both examples the character of ‘Jim Crow’ is an exaggerated representation of human stereotypes, on one hand a display of religious sanctity and human purity born against the supposed foolish and inherently villainous nature of the Jackdaw, and on the other a figurehead of white superiority used to rationalise and deepen African American inequality. Interestingly so, corvids have co-evolved along-side predators. Through this symbiotic relationship crows were able to aid ancient humans locate prey, in return gaining access to the remains of their food. Thus their cultural significance as scavengers today are built on thousands of years of co-evolution. Perhaps then, our applications of thievery to Jackdaw behaviour are a result of our detachment and disenchantment from the ecological world – the same world responsible for shaping us.
Mytho-poetic inquiry might help us challenge our civilisational myopia, and understand the more-than-humans outside of our anthropocentric preconceptions. Perhaps I’ve been trying too hard to intellectualise that initial encounter with those Nonsuch Jackdaws. When first experiencing their deafening chorus and sunset murmurations I felt an openness to the world around me, a feeling of presence I had not experienced in some time. In this numinous encounter I not only saw them or merely heard them, but rather entered into relationship with them, into another mode of being that surrendered to the ambiguity of the sensuous. Looking back I could say those Jackdaws became messengers, archetypes of the collective shadow, surpassing their biological identity by becoming mirrors of my own pysche. The deeper I experienced them, the more I let go, and through this undoing of perception, the more they revealed parts of me to myself. A mytho-poetic alchemy in which the outer world reflects the inner, and vice versa. This exchange of energy might be said to arise from the implicate order of the world: a deeper interconnected reality where everything is enfolded within everything else, as proposed by David Bohm (1989), contributor to theoretical physics, philosophy of mind, and neuropsychology. By embracing a larger narrative, fueled by a tacit awareness of the implicate order, the jackdaws became drenched in personal meaning. Bohm describes this ‘active meaning making’ as an “explication of a more inconspicuous form of meaning that is called into consciousness through its relationship to the implicate order” (Ruebsaat, 2013). In allowing the Jackdaws to become key players in our conception of self, a portal opens to the unconscious. Entering into this relationship then is an act of archetypal activism; a reclamation of one’s agency that emerges through some qualitative resonance with the ‘other’. Thus, we might say the self, and the dynamic process of ‘becoming’, in the Deleuzian sense, are unified within the implicate order, and expressed, or individuated in the explicate. This is the essence of embodiment.
Reflection is the true seeing; the root of seeing through, when one can apprehend the archetypal being revealed in an event or story. One can then hear the archetypal image voicing beneath the myth as it sings and flickers through for one to engage actively (Ruebsaat, 2013).
Mythopoetics provides the spinal cord along which all my ideas have found their natural alignment. It is the exploration of jackdaw as archetype, catalysed by my experience of them, that prompts the ‘naked ear’, able to listen in spite of one’s preconceptions, and in doing so, reflects ourselves back to ourselves – as a result there arises a deepening and unveiling of the self. Much like meditation, where we give ourselves permission to let thoughts and emotions pass through us without judgement, I propose that any ‘more-than-human’ encounter offers that same space of openness and receptivity that enables one to integrate different aspects of their psyche. And yet, even as I recreate their mythology, Jackdaws remain as agents of transformation.
A marriage of depth pyschology, phenomenology, deleuzian ‘becomings’ and mythopoetic inquiry – but what does this look, or sound like as a creative composition? The visuals are already well underway and offers a visceral collage of the liminal layers of perception. Phenomenologically speaking, I hope to represent the source of our subconscious preconceptions through this. Using fast paced imagery, the visual element will aim to entrance the watcher in a dreamlike state, within which the subconscious recalls, and speaks to us through, the obscurity of experience. This will act as the backdrop to the soundscape composition. But how do I translate the Jackdaw-as-archetype – as agents of transformation – into a musical and sonic context? In order to adhere to both ‘ecological consciousness’ and psychological transformation I will utilise both raw field recordings, manipulated field recordings, and composed music. Instead of creating an entire world of sound, drawing from endless libraries of samples, I will instead set myself the challenge of only using my own field recordings. This include jackdaws, the dawn and dusk chorus, water as a symbol of fluidity (much like Deleuze and Guattari’s idea on becoming), and the church bells of Nonsuch Park. I will start the piece with these bells, tolling predictably, to represent the hourly march of time, of control. This is echoed in Schafer’s denotation of the bell as an anthropocentric signal delineating the boundaries of a town or city. This could work well over static, geometric city-like imagery to further invoke the feeling or order, separation, or the known world. The seven bells will also signify the start of sunset, in which the encounter begins, as the jackdaws murmurate before settling to roost. From here I will introduce the sound of the jackdaws slowly, accompanied by a string ensemble. As the encounter grows I might use violins to replicate, and even replace the voices of the jackdaws, to signify growing enchantment – as the chatterings grow more and more cacophonous, I will switch in and out of violin-as-jackdaw and actual jackdaw sounds, even overlapping the two, to tread the line of both phenomenological experience and reciprocal becoming; as stringed instruments and jackdaws become indistinguishable there should be a culmination of transformative resonance, where jackdaw and self are no longer separate. As murmurations begin, the score will grow in depth. To sustain the continuous process of seeing/ hearing past the fog of preconception, an ongoing tension of continuous becoming will be delivered by the continued manipulation of jackdaw voices, drifting in and out of mythic engagement, phenomenological reality, and projected distortions. Time might slow down in places (bird against bird?) – a warping of time when encountering a perceived divinity, of self, or other. Bowed textures could mimic both air currents, murmurations, in the spirit of Jon Hassell (particularly his use of the trumpet to recreate the feel of a ‘Rising Thermal’ in his album Fourth World Vol 1 Possible Musics). I might also explore other extended techniques such as sul pont, harmonics, or scratch tones. I’ve even thought of using Jackdaw voices as mediators of resonator controls representing an implicate order – creating an organic ever-evolving ambience. I’ve thought to use my own voice too, perhaps whispers, audible, yet just out of reach, as if something is being communicated but it is impossible to tell what. This is all only meant as a loose structure for what I might call an audiovisual poem. The aim is to make audible the process of deconstructing anthropocentric listening, revealing not only the jackdaws, but our inner-workings through them. An entangled listening as a form of spiritual and psychological alignment.
We often don’t have the language, or indeed the mental syntax, for the intuited unknown and so we’re obliged to reach into and employ the poetic mind. This mind enables us better to explore nascent truths that aren’t yet tangibly manifested (Ruebsaat, 2013).
Bibliography
Barbeau, M. Marias and Beynon, W., 1987. Tsimshian narratives: Volume 1: Tricksters, shamans, and heroes. J.J. Cove and G.F. MacDonald (eds.). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Barham, R.H. 1837. The Jackdaw of Rheims. Family Stories, Bentley’s Miscellany, IV. London: R. Bentley. AP 4 B38, Robarts Library.
Bohm, D. 1989. Meaning and information. In: P. Pylkkänen, ed. The search for meaning: the new spirit in science and philosophy. Toronto: HarperCollins Canada.
Buxton, N. 2006. The crow and the coconut: Accident, coincidence, and causation in the Yogavāsiṣṭha. Philosophy East and West, 56(3), pp.392–408
Dangers, D. 2022. Crow & Crone: Twin archetypes. Feathers and Folktales. 7 September. Available at: https://feathersandfolktales.com/diemdangersblogposts/crow-and-crone-twin-archetypes [Accessed 15 Apr. 2025].
Ruebsaat, S. 2013. What does a mythopoetic inquiry look like? SFU Educational Review, 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.21810/sfuer.v6i.372
Composition Research
Environmental sound is a type of language, a text. As well, the technology through which we transmit the sounds, has its own language, its own process. If we truly want to reveal meanings through recorded environmental sound and truly draw the listener inside these meanings, then we must transmit precise information and knowledge and demystify technologically hidden processes. When we have done something simple as condensing the duration of a dawn chorus in order to fit it into a pre-determined time frame on a CD, let’s say that and how we have done it. Let’s name the voices of the place, let’s mention the weather for example or the season, the landscape, the social and natural context. Or let us at least be clear about the inherent confusion about time and place when we work with environmental sound.
Thinking on my work so far, I wonder how much precise information to transmit. Most of what I have recorded so far is that of jackdaws, as well as the inevitable occurence of other sounds such as aircraft, traffic, other birdsong, and people. Each recording in of itself could be a composition that prompts a discussion into the inherent interconnectivity of the environment in relation to the jackdaws, and even myself as recordist. This seems to me like the ecological consciousness westerkamp proposes. Given that the nature of my work is concerned mainly with animism however, the imagination becomes integral to bridging the gap between the psychological and the physical. I get the sense that refashioning the sonic material to tell a sort of sonic fiction can still maintain an awareness of their provenance and relevance in an ecological context. Im reminded of Hector’s lecture on Sonic Fiction. Though I haven’t followed up much on this idea in terms of research, I remember him saying that this concept might be be viewed as a resistance to the banality and repressiveness of modernity. The imagination then becomes a powerful tool that challenges the status quo – in creating more reciprocal futures, and giving agency back to the individual. As long as this agency is concerned with honouring and amplifying the voices of the natural world, then this to me seems both ecologically conscious, as well as imaginatively empowering.
Something interesting that just occurred to me is the power of creative soundscape composition to change how the listener interacts with their soundscape. Someone recently told me that, after listening to an environmental soundscape recreation I had made, they become more aware of the birdsong around them, hearing their song with a renewed intensity. Though this soundscape was an inaccurate, somewhat exaggerated recreation of the actual habitats recorded, its ability to affect her in this way still remained.
Hildegard Westerkamp herself says:
Ideally, if we have managed to strike a chord in our listeners, the listening experience will re-emerge as valuable memory and information at a later point, or it will encourage listeners to visit, hear and experience first hand the original place or situation of which the work speaks…
Then we have come full circle. The work has created the naked, open ear in the listener, a curious ear that has moved him or her into action, into interaction with the soundscape…
But the “naked ear” of the microphone can achieve a wakefulness in our listening that has a direct influence on how we speak with environmental sounds through our compositions and productions. A new balance between recording/listening and composing/soundmaking can be achieved.
If her concept of the ‘naked ear’ is meant to foster an openness to sound in its rawness, allowing the listener to connect with the soundscape without the usual layers of interpretation or selective hearing, does this allow for the manipulation of audio for aesthetic reasons, or the inclusion of musical interpretation? In her work ‘Beneath the Forest Floor’ all of the sounds used, though manipulated, were recorded in the old-growth forests on British Columbia’s westcoast, moving the listener through visible forest, “into its’ shadow world, its’ spirit; into that which effects our body, heart and mind when we experience forest.” A beautifully rhythmic piece that does what it sets out to. Elements of musicality do appear however, and her dedication to using only field recordings as creative material appears to me as nothing more than a compositional challenge, though I’m sure she would argue differently. If she had actually used instruments to achieve the results given, and falsely claimed them as manipulated versions of original recordings, no-one would be none the wiser. What is most important in my opinion, is that the musical element successfully props up the rest of the composition in an appropriate way. Maybe I am simply trying to find an excuse to exercise my ability as a musician, but I do feel that the actual intention to move someone, is far more important than achieving the kind of restrictive purity in westerkamp’s compositions. Perhaps it is just a matter of personal values.
Some of the challenges I am faced with is that my work does not intend to be completely site specific, like Beneath the Forest Floor. The sounds of Nonsuch Park, and its jackdaws, are meant more as catalysts for a wider conversation into the emotional undercurrents of perception. In my improvisatory filmmaking I have captured everything from shadows to eyes, reflections of light, fluid movement, windows, shapes and textures of the city, and a whole host of other liminal, ‘in between’ moments that affect our perception of the world around us. These seemingly invisible forms clothe the ear. I think these moving images will underlay the sound of the jackdaws, without needing to be sounded themselves. (The opposite of schizophonic? Seen but not heard?). This hopefully will induce an awareness of the source of our preconceptions, in visceral form – those that colour our encounters with the more than human world. Still, I need to figure out how this all leads to a mutual transformation. Too many ideas maybe!
Regarding the actual composition, I have thought about only using the jackdaw recordings as material, as well as the church bells of nonsuch that ring every hour and have become an integral part of my sonic experience of the park. But I don’t know how to introduce enough variation into the piece. The whole piece should describe the encounter with the jackdaws, as a sort of epiphany in which one no longer hears them in relation to external preconceptions, but rather as a deeper exploration of self. By engaging with the nakedness of Westerkamp’s ear, one should feel more able to ask what it is that is truly going on internally when experiencing such visceral more than human encounters. Maybe its about changing the traditional symbolism of corvids as representing death and thievery as an element of mutual transformation. In overcoming these stories passed down, we allow ourselves to interact with these creatures as not an extension of human projection, but subjectivities in their own right. Ironically, despite their historical associations they are one of the most populous groups of birds, thriving in number unlike other more endangered birds. Still, through this ‘mytho-poetics’, we equip ourselves with the ability to alter other stories we have told that might have negative consequences on the welfare of our environment… potentially?
Bibliography
Westerkamp, H., 1992. Beneath the Forest Floor. [online] Available at: https://www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/sound/comp/2/ForestFloor/
Westerkamp, H., 2021. The Microphone Ear: Field Recording the Soundscape. Review Filigrane. Musique, esthétique, sciences, société, (26).
Westerkamp, H., 1994. Soundscapes of Cities. Presented at: Symposium From Bauhaus to Soundscape, Goethe Institut Tokyo, 6 October. Revised June 2014.
Mutual Transformations
To note, despite the ‘more-than-human’ emphasis, I do believe that such transformations occur regardless of one’s species taxon, thus what transpires with the jackdaws becomes only a more potent, symbolic, and even archetypal happenstance of something one can experience in the mundane – is there a danger in overlooking the everyday if one only seeks the extraordinary? Perhaps it is not so much a return to the ordinary, but perceiving the extraordinary within it. As a result, mutual transformations become as all encompassing and omnipresent as the air itself, whereby all interactions with the animate and inanimate are opportunities to change the way we understand and interact with the world; Not a canvas for our corporeal brushstrokes or mental projections, but an embodied reflection of something more internal. I realise here that I start entering into psychological, and even what feels to me sometimes as religious, territory, and though I have an intuitive grip on what I mean, I don’t think I’m prepared just yet to concretise it in words. But it is not dissimilar from the determinations of humankind throughout history – the hermetic adage ‘as above so below’ comes to mind. Either way, those Jackdaws, and their deafening chorus, symbolised something to me in that moment underneath the trees. Much like when looking at an incredible view at a high altitude, looking up at them made me feel a similar sense of awe, clarity, insignificance or what have you. In such moments, it only becomes more obvious how experience reveals the colours we imbue onto the world. A door opens to a clearer view of the self, and by default, reality. I feel that the way I unpack this exchange of energy concerns those unseen things – occult, not so much the political or the material, but the unspoken things of the feeling fabric. These are the forces cast aside by logic, defined by what is measurable, yet they persist in shaping experience. And by default, they become the root of all politics and culture, moving beneath the surface like currents beneath the tide, unseen but undeniable.
Over the weeks I have frequented Nonsuch Park, always just before sunset, staying until dusk. This, it seems, is the best time to record the jackdaws as they all gather and murmurate during the penumbra of twilight, before settling down to roost. I’ve become well acquainted with their gathering location, as well as their loose trajectory from tree to tree. Overtime its become easier to judge where to be, to experience their chatter and flight optimally. Sometimes their presence eludes me, while at others I am gifted with their closeness. Following them from tree to tree sometimes feels like a chase, other times a dance – though to them perhaps I am only an annoying human! Sometimes I wonder whether they recognise me. Whether they understand me as a part of their ‘more-than-jackdaw’ world? A waddling human, sometimes draped in cables, tracking their movements like a persistent and curious child. At times, especially those where the sun has disappeared from view, my vision muted by the onset of darkness, they become inseparable from the trees they line, appearing to me as the silhouettes of leaves. So much so that, while searching for them in the woods, I am startled with fright when they all spring into flight, leaping in a hundred directions from the branches of overhead trees. That sight though, is quite something to behold. As if the leaves themselves shapeshift into birds, unclothing their resident tree. Its worth mentioning that these critters chatter a lot – a talkative bunch. Sometimes they pervade the soundscape with their harsh ‘tchacks!’ and ‘kyas!’ Other times they serve as a soft backdrop to the songs of other, more solitary birds.
Key words : animism, phenomenology, encounters