the sonic reptile notebook

To begin with, on the discourse of reptiles…

Whilst searching for a name for this blog, I was playing about with the grammatically appropriate options such as

• sonic: utilizing, produced by, or relating to sound waves; broadly: of or involving sound [Merriam-Webster]
• sonorous: producing sound (as when struck) [M-W]
• sonar: acronym from sound navigation and ranging
• sono-/sonor-: prefix for something “relating to sound”

which quickly lead to the exploration of more fanciful options such as

• sonorium: the suffix -ium is used to form nouns, sometimes in the sense of more complicated or bigger (also a German Gothic Rock/Dark Wave label)
• sonotopia: place of sounds (though not so many web addresses)

Because I am not a linguist, this already causes sufficient stimulus to be giddy: because -ium and -topia make sounds (or sensations perceived by the ear caused by the vibration of air or some other medium) into nouns, sounds themselves would seem to lack that “thingness” or concreteness that would qualify them as nouns.

So this is the space for made up words that communicate (me) the elusive, unsayable quality of sound through the medium of linguistic confusion – for all types of sonosauri (saurus=lizard) and their sonorarium (think aquarium, terrarium).

Consider:

“If I put electrodes in your visual cortex (the part of the brain at the back of the head, concerned with seeing), and I then showed you a red tomato, there is no group of neurons that will cause my electrodes to turn red. But if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precisely that frequency, causing the electrode to emit electrical activity at 440 Hz – for pitch, what goes into the ear comes out of the brain!” (Levitin. This is Your Brain on Music. 2006.)

Sound’s ability to physically affect the (human) brain and induce mental states that are perceived as seductive or abrasive interests me as a space of synaesthetic disclosure and bodily communion. This journal is a step in the direction of understanding that.

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