Coda: Encountering Sound

November 1, 2025 · sound , theory , book , sonic-realism

The coda to Sound Encounters, reflecting on how sounds persist in memory and experience. This closing chapter considers the lingering presence of sonic encounters - how sounds we can't quite place continue to shape our understanding of the world long after they've faded.

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There’s a sound you remember, but you can’t place.

Not a melody. Not a word. More like a texture. A pressure in the air.

It arrives unannounced. It lingers longer than expected. It bends time, reshapes space, then fades.

You try to recreate it – to record, describe, synthesise. But it’s not the same.

What remains is not the sound itself, but its trace. The way it changed the room. Its impact before you could come to name it.

This is the sonic object. Not just heard, but felt. Not just present, but persistent. Something that acts, even after it disappears.

Sound is strange. It moves through walls, bodies, histories. It appears. It insists. It withdraws.

This book’s sonic realism follows that strangeness – not to explain it, but to dwell alongside it.

To argue that sound is not symbol or metaphor or ghost. But object. Real, contingent, affective. A participant, an equal.

Realism isn’t mere metaphysics. It’s ethical.

To say that sound is real is to say: it matters. Not because we interpret it, but because it produces consequences. It acts inside systems of attention, silence, and power.

A sonic realism worth having must be: Situated, not universal; accountable, not abstract; attuned, not extractive.

It must recognise the sovereign sounds Dylan Robinson describes as precious – those that don’t want to be exposed.¹

It must acknowledge the coded listening Eidsheim reveals – where the racialised voice is not simply heard, but judged.²

It must know that all access is partial. All listening is trained. All sound is political.

And still, it must insist: Sound is.

Not illusion. Not ephemera. Not effect. A presence among presences.

A force that shapes attention, space, and relation. A real thing that refuses to stay still.

Sonic realism isn’t a system. It’s an invitation: To listen – not just for meaning, but for motion. To attune – not just to presence, but to refusal. To follow – not just what is heard, but what withdraws.

The question is no longer “what is sound?” The question is: What becomes possible when we stop assuming sound isn’t?

Notes

Robinson, D. (2020) Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Eidsheim, N. S. (2019) The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music. Durham, Duke University Press.