Voicing memories

• Main Author: Norie Neumark
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Royal Danish Library 2017-12-01
• Series: SoundEffects
• Online Access: https://www.soundeffects.dk/article/view/102923

Last night as I was falling asleep, I put in my earbuds to listen to an audiobook. To get into the Nordic mood to write for a journal coming out of Scandinavia, I scrolled to one of Henning Mankell’s famous detectives, Kurt Wallander. On the verge of sleep, somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness – like memory itself – I listened to Wallander, through his narrator, listening to the room at the scene of the crime, waiting for it to speak to him, to voice what had happened there. Through the haze of half-sleep I wondered whose memory was being voiced in that assemblage comprised of the iPod and earbuds, the audiobook, the room, the narrator, the author and my own memories of watching Krister Henriksson play Wallander and of listening to other Wallander books? And when I woke today and slid the earbuds out of my ears, I felt ready to attend to assemblages and the memories that they voice.