The Theory

In order to explore this listening domain of ambient Sound/Nature, I have developed audio-visual materials that I call Soundscape Haiku. These are short videos, each 4’33’’ in duration, a reference to John Cage’s silent piece of that name, (for a discussion about the significance of Cage’s piece see section on “Silence” in “Ways of Listening”). My decision on duration was influenced by my sense of the tension that can be maintained when gaze and attention is continuously contained and controlled within a frame of sight and reference, and how the effect of this tension enables movement in attention towards sound. In most cases the sounds are the actual ambient sounds of the setting, in some cases the sounds are superimposed in editing, in others the sounds are muted in order to evoke imaginary sounds that one might expect or wish to apply.

Soundscape Haiku invite us to engage with the life of places, objects and their soundscapes. The visual invitation is into a framed picture. The camera ‘eye’ is not static but organic, it has its own deep pulse, in some cases perhaps the eye of the patient bird. This observing is an unquiet gaze, sliding and shifting, often imperceptibly panned, into and across the objects and their processes. It both holds and shifts the gaze. The constricting awareness created by the totality of the framing may fade as one is drawn into the scene. One may search the frame, patently or impatiently, for clues to its context and environment, as if this would reveal its meaning or purpose. There is sound: water, wind, silence, metal, traffic, and footfall. There is a relationship established between these in the composition. Expectation and anticipation naturally arise, perhaps a desire for an unfolding narrative, for some semantic clues, and comparisons to some known genre. There may arise the need to know something that is beyond the entrapment of the framing as if this would serve as an explanation. All of these reactions and responses are just ‘to notice’, and represent the possibilities of both reflection and play. 

Perhaps play emerges when we are free to allow our observations and impressions to stimulate our imaginations, and to discard the notion that meaning lies elsewhere. The elements of the pieces, a shadow, a pattern, a fixed point, present themselves for imaginative designation as ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’, of ‘causes’ and ‘effects’, as something metamorphosing into something else, as entropic, or as regular as the weather. 

So playing with the immersed gaze, adopting, or finding oneself adopting, some way of listening, one may find mesmeric patterns, pulses, light and shadow, contrapuntal relations between sight and sound. There may be fractal patterns. These compositions are about processes, energy, pulses, and metamorphosis. They enable us to be aware of the visual shifts in our own seeing and listening. The invitation to play is therefore an invitation to allow perceptual transformations to arise. We can even sometimes be relieved of the desires of the human eye, to watch, look, gaze like an animal.

Haiku is a Japanese poetic form that derives from collaborative poetic activities called renga. The haiku form dates back to the C12th. The form in English contains a total of approximately 17 syllables – this is not comparable with Japanese where syllables are counted differently. However the 5, 7, 5 syllable/three line structure is maintained in both languages. Basho (1644-94) developed haiku form and content in the late C17th emphasized the virtues of directness, lightness of touch and finding spiritual moments in the everyday lives of common people and their engagement with nature. Haiku has been described as ‘verbal sketching’ (Cobb, 2002). Through a number of exponents, Buson (1716-84) and Issa (1762-1826) certain conventions of composition and engagement were established. The first is brevity and compression. The second is the seasonal reference or feel, yet this can be set aside in haikus of human affairs. The themes of journey, exile, homelessness, solitude, loss and illness are common The transience of life, the wheel of human life turning and returning co-exist in the haiku’s temporality. The engagement with the haiku is intended to unlock the reader’s personal store of experience, to enable connections from the ‘half said thing’ to our predicament. 

Connections between haiku and visual images have been made, notably by Cobb (2002) in placing Japanese woodblocks, and scrolls of ink on paper next to both the written Japanese originals and English translations. There are a number of excellent introductory text to Haiku and many collections, some of which I note below.

References

Basho. 1985. On Love and Barley. Penguin Books.

Basho, Buson & Issa.Ed. Hass, Robert, 1994. The Essential Haiku. The Ecco Press.

Bonas, Geoffrey & Thwait, Anthony. 1064. The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse. Penguin Books.

Cobb, David & Lucas, Martin. 1998. The Iron Book of British Haiku. Iron Press.

Clements, Jonathan. 2000, The Moon in the Pines. Zen Haiku. Francis Lincoln/Art Institute of Chicago.

Dupont, Lonnie Hull, 2001, Footprints in the Snow: The Haiku Box, Journey Editions, Tuttle Publishing

Fujirwara no Sadaie (1162-1241), 1982. The Little Treasury of One Hundred People.One Poem Each. Princeton University Press.

Issa, Kobayashi,1997, The Spring of My Life. Shambala Centaur Editions.

Miura, Isshu & Sasaki, Ruth,1965. The Zen Koan Harvest Books.

Sit, Kwan-Yuk Claire, 2014, The Heart Sutra and Beyond. Lindisfarne Books.

Wright, Richard. 1998. Haiku. This Other World. Arcade Publishing, New York.

Links

British Haiku Society

Poetry Library

HSA-Haiku