Making Sounds, Part 1: Emotional Earfuls

Octavia E. Butler’s “Bloodchild” is a love story. Science fiction is often able to confront very real and tangible issues through the disguise of unbelievability or absurdity. In the afterword to “Bloodchild”, Octavia E. Butler explicitly states that the short story is concerned with three things: love between two different beings, having to make a difficult decision when faced with disturbing consequences, and men facing pregnancy. Fundamentally, this can be understand as a question of who we love, how we demonstrate love and what we are willing to do for those we love. These questions of love are universals, not limited to the realm of aliens or science fiction.

With this in mind, I collaborated with Oriana Neidecker to create an emotional soundscape inspired by Butler’s tale of love. How could sound communicate the emotional rollercoaster experienced by Gan, the main character? He loves T’Gatoi, perhaps more than his mother. Yet after watching and participating in the violent and gruesome birth of a Tlic by a fellow human male, he confronts whether he is willing to endure the same harrowing experience. Does he love T’Gatoi enough? His sister? His mother? Do we love anyone enough?

In structuring the piece, we identified four sections of emotion and described them in terms of colours. Discussing our intention through emotion and colour allowed us to broadly give definition to the written narrative without feeling constrained by the individual details. For each section, we established tempo and pacing, volume and legibility, degree of repetition, and how clips were cut together (blended or harshly).

1. Grey-purple: calm, relaxed, placid, layered and blended sounds, yet on edge
2. Deep red: chaos, anticipation, horrified, frenetic, abrupt cuts, overwhelmed
3. Blue gradient: oscillating and alternating, waves moving in and out, thinking out loud, conflict,
4. Green: acceptance, reconciliation, growth

The completed piece is meant to be heard individually through headphones—as opposed to earbuds—in the dark and with the listener’s eyes closed. The sound is envisioned as emanating from within each of us, deep in our ribcage. The sounds are in conflict, fighting to be heard above one another and rising in volume. They jump from right-to-left-to-right-to-left, unsure of where to land. Yet they find resolution and acceptance. Love is a series of questions.