David Toop: Sinister Resonance (Continuum, 6/24/11)
David Toop’s new book, Sinister Resonance, looks at the ubiquity and power of sound and silence in our lives, even if we rarely take note of it. What is it about a sudden noise in a darkened house, a lull in a conversation, or eavesdropping that quickens our pulse and plays on our emotions? This musician-writer sets out to enrich our understanding of what sound means in a primal, emotional sense.
Toop explains sound as something uncanny, even eerie, and generally of uncertain source. Sound is like a ghost — intangible, always just out of reach, impossible to pin down, a “present absence” or “absent presence,” tied to emotion and memory, uniting past and present. It’s an unconventional thesis, and his approach to the study of silence is appropriately academic, even methodical.
However, his evidence follows the interdisciplinary approach of media studies; Toop looks at every kind of book, film, and artwork imaginable and supports his claim with examples spanning two centuries. Nothing is off-limits, from Sigmund Freud and Old Masters to creaky old houses. In fact, it’s Freud’s theory of the uncanny that gets the most attention, in connecting our emotional response with the sensual data of sound. Sounds and silence possess the power to unnerve us, and their sudden appearance (or absence) is often eerie.