Listening below: two variations on fugitive sound

ABSTRACT In this audio essay, I ruminate on the pedagogical implications of two kinds of deep listening to what lies beneath our taken-for-granted auditory worlds. The first considers the elemental soundscapes and chatty silence of the environments in which we are always already implaced. The second considers the ethical drones and demands of dispossession, especially in terms of social justice. In doing so, I also develop a notion—following Stephano Harney and Fred Moten, Tina Campt, and others—of fugitivity related to listening, sound, stillness, and escape. The essay contains recorded narration that is enveloped in and infused with fugitive sounds of nature, human-made sounds, a beating heart, and low-frequency infrasound that can only be felt but not heard.