Sonic ghosts One of the realities that sound can open is an ethereal one. Ethereal meaning spiritual/ghostly/ beyond (besides) the physical. Although listening and sound-sensitivity has a big role in many shamanistic practices, that’s not what I am talking about here. I rather think that the simple physical properties of sound creates the possibility of a subjective ethereal experience, without forgetting that its ‘just’ vibrating air. Sound is able to (partly) pass through things, bend around things and travel very far. This makes it possible to perceive the presence of things you can not see. If a blackbird produces sound it forces air through its syrinx (the avian vocal apparatus), making parts of its body and the air in its body vibrate. The air and vibration passes the tongue and the beak that define its sound and directionality even further.3 The energy of the vibration brings all the air between the bird and your eardrums into movement. In a way the act of singing enlarges the presence of the bird. From being just 25 cm from beak to tail, the bird has become as big as the area in which it is audible. But besides size, sound carries a part of the birds identity as well. In its sonic presence lies its will. Blackbirds have different vocalisations and even fitting directional patterns for different intentions. An alarm for danger, called the “cheer”, is projected omnidirectional to alert as many blackbirds as possible, while the precopulatory call (mating call, also known as the “ti-ti-ti” call) is very directional to avoid attracting competition.4 Together the size, shape and the character of these different calls form a ‘body’ of vibrating air with a short lifespan, a clear goal and hurdles to take before it dies. A body that we can’t see and can travel through walls. You could think of this body as a ghost. When you listen to an environment and visualise the sounds to be these kind of ghosts you can let yourself enter an ethereal reality where things relate to each other in a different way. Instead of heaving clear borders, the bodies that inhabit ‘the ethereal’ gradually fade out at their edges and merge into one-another. When we hear a train station for instance, we could identify it as one thing; a train station. But the sound of a train station consists of many things. Trains, check-in beeps, announcements, people walking fast, people calling, pigeons, all projecting multiple sonic ghosts that radiate through space and disappear again. These entities literally take up parts of each others space since they are all audible at the same time at the same place. The air at this listening position is vibrating in an incredibly complex pattern which contains information about all of their identities and locations. In this way the sonic world is filled with transparent intangible shapes carrying meaning and intentions, hence ghosts. As a listener/ perceiver you have an active role in the way these ghosts and their world appear. Both the separation of ‘bodies’ and the interpretation of intent is subject to personal focus. Which sounds belong to which intention and body? When we hear a train braking it could be interpreted in a number of ways. The machinist doing his job, the train shouting out its arrival, or, if your imagination is allows it, you could hear the material of the wheels and brake-disk screaming of pain. If you were waiting on the train and looking on your phone it means the train has arrived. If you are the maintenance engineer you are probably listening to the material of the brakes and are checking if they might need replacement. Because of this subjectiveness the identity of a soundghost is even more fluid. “Clink”, “Did you just hear the bottle or the knife or me?” Is what a friend asks after I tried to explain the sonic ghosts to him. My answer? It depends what you listen for, but if you’d like you could very briefly hear the human, the knife and the bottle become one.