In Engaging Technology in Theological Education Mary Hess explains the element of the "sonic environment" in mass mediated popular culture. She encourages us to be more attentive to how the experiences we bring shape how we hear the world around us. What are "the multiple meanings people are making with various sounds of music?" (136-139)
This attentiveness to sound intrigued me, particularly as I reflected on participating on Friday in the culminating worship experience of the Three Day Feast. Together our worship class of more than forty-five seminary students led the class through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. The sounds of the day included acapella voices, choral voices, reading voices of men, women and children, acoustic guitars, drums, piano, a singing bowl, sledgehammers, chainsaws, running water, wind and silence. It was in the best sense of the word a riotous cacophony. During the Good Friday service which included a procession outdoors, the impromptu whine of a chainsaw across the street revved up just as we heard John's narrative account of how Peter cut off Malchus' ear:
10Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear.
Later people talked about the emotions that they experienced; where I was distracted, others welcomed the juxtaposition of the sounds against the text.
Thinking further about the exercise Mary describes in her discussion of sonic environment (136-139), I wish we had encouraged people to correlate their emotions to color. Elsewhere in the book, Mary talks about how we live in a world which is "socially constructed white."(106) It challenges me to think about how that construct could influence, for example, the choice and use of the colors for the liturgical church year where black may be draped across the cross during the penitential season of Lent while the church is bathed in brilliant white and gold for the jubilant Easter celebration. Lament and death and the macabre are often depicted with black, when it may be more accurate to describe them as gray or even colorless, because they are those times when we sink so low that no Light shines in.
3 comments:
I like the idea of using "grey" as a time when the light cannot shine through...
On hearing what others hear, it's also interesting how these things change over time and culture. When I took Worship this spring (thanks for sharing your experience!) Prof Lange shared that in the context of the early church time/region, white was often associated with death - hence white baptismal gowns, to signify less a new pure person and more the dying of the old.
When I heard you speak of the sound of the cainsaw it made me think of the local PBS show "Red Green". The start of that show has the sound of a chainsaw, boat motors, birds, and gunshots; all sounds that I regularly hear in rural northern Minnesota. Often I am the one responsible for the sounds. For me these are the sounds of everyday life. The sounds of where Christ meets us Monday to Saturday. Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on "sounds". Color and feelings I am not so sure I could do.
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