I was initially puzzled as I listened to Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room”. Licier’s natural stutter is prominent in the initial recording and then accentuated every time he plays another recording back, this irregularity in his speech only seeming to be further emphasized as the recording progresses even though he states that he seeks to smooth them out. Why did Lucier choose to stop at forty five minutes and twenty four seconds? Why not thirty six minutes and four seconds or seventy two minutes and fifty nine seconds? Certainly there are multiple different degrees of reinforcement that the room’s resonant frequencies can show. When considering how the recording ended, I would argue that his speech wasn’t one hundred percent smoothed out. Could it ever be? I feel as if the playbacks emphasized Lucier’s speech imperfections, but not in a bad. Each new recording took on a more musical tone, the ending sounding as if it could be played in the part of a movie when the fatally-wounded heroin confusedly enters their society’s respective heaven and faced with the inevitable question of whether or not they want to die or be given a second chance at life and finish their quest. No heroes’ journey is ever perfect, much like Lucier’s journey to perfect his speech.
My father has always slept with a bedside fan for the sound it provides, a habit that has been passed on to both my younger brother and myself. I find that his lack of appreciation for total silence has also been unknowingly passed on to me as I cannot remember when, how or why I began sleeping with a bedside fan but it has been there for as long as I can remember. I find silence unnerving and can’t sleep without some type of background noise whether it be my own bedside fan or the Belk air conditioners’ fan control set on the “HI” setting. Music is another constant background noise I depend upon and is always playing from a speaker or headphones as vital background noise.
