Drowning Out the Noise
Private Listening, Public Spatialities, Queer Wellbeing
Published in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, Issue 5(3) Queer Politics and Positionalities in Sonic Art
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT How does music listening in headphones function as an extension of the queer self in the
public sphere? In what ways does this music support, exhibit, or conceal the presentation of gender and
sexuality in these heteronormative publics? Awarded the 2022 Frederick Niecks Essay Prize and exhibited
at Northwestern University in 2023, this project explores the extent to which this private listening adds to
or alters the physical presentation of an individual and supports the action of existing queer in public
spatialities, through the lens of Goffman’s “Territories of the Self (1971).” Methodologically, this work
experiments with queer sonic ethnography through the dissemination of 18 sections of audio from six
Go-Along interviews, a methodology developed by Kusenbach in “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as
Ethnographic Research Tool (2003).” I aim to answer Steven Feld’s 2014 imagination of “an anthropology
in sound” and to build upon Rooke’s 2009 writings on queering ethnographic research, particularly in its
methods. I present this work as a report of an experiment in queer sonic ethnography, in the hope that it
may further research into the public and private lives of queer individuals and provide a deeper insight into
the street soundscape of the queer everyday. KEYWORDS sonic ethnography, walking interview, queer
studies, popular musicology, human geography
INTRODUCTION
JAMIE: I think I’m queer and I’m gender nonconforming in presentation, and I’m Jewish,
and I feel like the intergenerational trauma, as well as the direct experiences of, um, being
a gender-nonconforming person kind of makes it quite difficult to go through like public
spaces—to walk and to have strangers look at me or interact with them. Yeah, sometimes
it feels like there’s an element of wanting to drown that out or wanting to be in my own
space and not have to worry about that all the time.
From March of 2022 to the present I have been walking and talking with queer strangers,
documenting these conversations in audio. In the style of Kusenbach’s methodology of
the Go-Along interview, where street phenomenology is conducted in-situ,1 I joined
queer individuals on their daily routines in urban environments. Conversations were shared on walks to university, on the bus home from work, on lunchtime strolls, during
the process of donating clothes, while walking dogs, even amid a university-sponsored sex
toy fair. Where this method is made unique to this project is in its recording process.
Participants wear a pair of binaural, over-the-ear recording earbuds that capture conver-
sation from their perspective. The earbuds are inconspicuous to passersby: we do not look
like we are in the midst of an interview; rather, we appear as two pedestrians having
a conversation. The strategy of this appearance aims to limit the extent to which parti-
cipants feel out of place in the streetscape. The actual recorded content exists as a first--
person snapshot of an everyday, lived experience. The earbuds are able to capture
existence from the perspective of the ears of the exister. As a result of this binaurality,
the raw experience of existing and listening from the perspective of the individual can be
shared directly from speaker to listener. In this listening, the voice of the participant is
heard positionally from the mouth of the listener, ultimately putting the listener into the
head, ears, mind, voice of the participant.
ELIZABETH: There were also times in my life where I sort of used it as, not like a lifeline but
something that I could kind of ground myself in when I was feeling a little untethered
from lacking a queer community. Like when I was, I think when I first realized that I liked
women when I was in early high school, I had a big Hayley Kiyoko moment as we all do,
you know, where I was like, “Oh my god, lesbians.” And I would watch those music videos
over and over and over again.
ANNE: Are you even a lesbian if you didn’t?
ELIZABETH: I was like, “Oh my god. Oh my god, guys. This is it. This is it. This is big. This is big stuff.”
ANNE: “She’s doing it. She’s doing it and it’s on the internet and everyone can see it.”
ELIZABETH: Literally. Literally. No, that’s it. That’s exactly it.
Bjorkman and Malterud state that, due to their propensity to live extensively private
lives, many queer individuals are “inaccessible to research.”2 Likewise, Rooke highlights
the vulnerability of the queer research subject, exploring the significant theoretical work
that must be undertaken in advance of a queer ethnographic study in order to accurately
research and portray queer experiences.3 From these perspectives it is clear that traditional
methods of interviewing and fieldwork do not successfully access queer lives. Instead, we
must imagine ways to queer ethnographic research methodologies. In Kusenbach’s
method, while not presented as queer in its construction, participants are not required
to enter into unfamiliar spaces or be met with the eyes of multiple researchers. Con-
versely, the individual is also not intruded upon in their home or among the eyes and ears
of friends and family in their daily lives. Rather, they are met in familiar but simulta-
neously anonymous space, in their neighborhoods and within their routines. As a result,
I find that they feel more comfortable to speak freely. As a researcher I make it very clear
to participants that they are in control of the interview and reveal my “embodied
situatedness”4 as a queer woman in order to further increase the comfort and agency
of the individual. In Elizabeth’s case above, we bond over the shared queer transcendence
of the Hayley Kiyoko “Girls Like Girls”5 music video that released in 2015, right at the
beginning of both of our journeys as lesbians. Rooke explores the ethnographic stakes of
conducting research as queer “in the field,” recognizing the messy and harmful history of
ethnography, where much of this harm originates from the power dynamic between
“researcher” and “other.” Rooke explores the extent to which this narrative is undone
in the new relationship forged when queer research is conducted by “the Queer
Ethnographer.”6 As a result of the propensity for queer individuals to be exploited
as workers, both historically and in the present,7 this project is an attempt to reverse
this narrative.
In relation to the dissemination of this audio data, this project serves as an experiment
in transmission and analysis of these untouched sonic ethnographic recordings. Littlejohn
argues that sonic ethnography can be understood as “ontological poetics,”8 where envir-
onments can be comprehended in the way they are known to their inhabitants. He cites
a bias in this comprehension, stating, “The partiality of those compositions derives not
only from the fact that microphones and their holders always have a particular ‘point of
view.’”9 This project aims to reduce the severity of these partialities in its recording
process and in its dissemination. The physical microphone is given to the participants
to wear from the perspective of the ears, allowing the participants an increased agency and
for the recordings to be captured directly from the participants’ point of view. Of course,
Littlejohn’s statement has to do with the bias of how the study is organized by its
researcher, who often is the individual holding the microphone, but I do believe the
removal of the recording device from the actual hands of the researcher reduces their
ability to entirely control the conversation.
Methodologically, through recording binaural audio from the participant’s sonic
perspective the listener can also hear and imagine the streetscape where the interview is
being situated. Littlejohn quotes sound artist and anthropologist Steven Feld in a 2014
interview: “Could we imagine an anthropology in rather than about sound?”10 Where
Littlejohn imagines an anthropology utilizing sound in disciplines outside of sound as
a subject, this project amasses both an anthropology in sound and simultaneously about
sound. In an attempt to fully understand sonic worlds and experiences, it becomes
more pertinent that we explore capturing and disseminating sonic worlds in their
entirety. As a result, the methodology for this project aims to record untouched audio
data from the sonic perspective of the individual—both in the hope it may capture
aspects of the streetscape in order to transport the physical environment to the listener,
and in the hope it may capture an essence of the spoken word that cannot be written down. Dicks et al.11 and Crichton and Childs12 cite the distinction between spoken
word in audio and in transcription, where the audio data portrays differing, and
arguably more, perspective and nuance than the transcribed data. I am interested in
the extent to which spoken word is not able to be converted to two-dimensional text to
retain its subtleties, inflections, pauses, and emotional deliveries. In order to explore
this further, this study will publish approximately 20 minutes of first-person audio data
alongside their transcriptions.
More generally, this study experimentally attempts to mitigate the effects of my own bias by
offering up the data for analysis and reflection of the reader/listener. I am curious about the
role of reader-as-interpreter. What is afforded to you when you are given the agency to interact
with ethnographic data in its raw form? Is what I hear different from what you hear? When
I ask questions such as these, I am reminded of “The Listening Guide,”13 and of Woodcock’s
employment of the guide as a feminist methodology for the analysis of ethnographic interview
recordings.14 “The Listening Guide” asks, “what can be known and how?”15 and aims to
provide a framework for listening to vocal recordings of ethnographic interviews. The guide
allows us to listen for the “blueprint” of the human voice—its “harmonies and dissonances, its
distinctive tonality, key signatures, pitches, and rhythm”16—as a tactic for “unearthing trends
that may have gone unnoticed” and for “coming to know the inner world of another
person.”17 So we are forced to ask: if there are particular characteristics about a human voice
that can only be understood through listening, can knowledge about these unique character-
istics be shared through text alone? In answer to this question, I ask you to listen to the audio
of these conversations and hear if you might be able to come to know the “inner worlds,” and
perhaps outer worlds, of the queer participants in this study.
THE SHEATH
“It kind of feels like I’m getting away with something.”
This project explores the abilities of private listening to create or strengthen the social
boundaries and barriers described in Goffman’s 1971 work Territories of the Self.
Ostensibly, private listening or headphone wearing would be classed within the territory
entitled “Possessional Territory,” or “any set of objects that can be identified with the self
and arrayed around the body wherever it is.”18 However, this research showcases the vast
and diverse uses for private listening and headphone wearing that fortify a number of the
Territories of the Self. Particularly, the territories that are useful for the purposes of this
work are Goffman’s “The Sheath,” “Personal Space,” “Informational Preserve,” and
“Conversational Preserve.”19
Goffman defines the sheath as “the skin that covers the body and, at a little remove, the
clothes that cover the skin.”20 For queer individuals, the sheath is not as simplistic as it
may appear. Valentine speaks to the “myth” of private and public, and the extent to which
the sexed self is never able to be private21 due to sexed actions and presentation, such as
holding hands or kissing, or, in regard to Goffman, the presentation of the individual as
nonconforming to heterosexual expectations of dress or body.22 What is worn or not
worn, how hair is styled, how the physicality of the body is presented; each small physical
choice amalgamates into a human body that “betrays” the self as it is “offered up” to the
public.23 Eeli uses she/they pronouns and identifies as bisexual and nonbinary. Eeli and
I spoke about presentation and their choice of “sheath” on an Edinburgh city bus from
Princes Street to Gorgie in March 2022.
EELI: I think [music] allows me to almost like imagine and fantasize and support myself in
feeling like, sort of understanding my feelings are valid. So even if let’s say, like today, I feel
like, “Well, I’m kind of underneath my jacket, I’m kind of dressed as a . . . single mom
librarian.” Whereas I feel like “Yes, I like the clothes,” but I feel like it doesn’t necessarily
represent who I am. They’re more of a convenience thing. And I feel like even listening to
music in a space like this makes me feel like I can sort of live in a detached world of my own
where I do present how I wish I could in an ideal world.
ANNE: Do you feel like you go through that same process at home? Or is it more when
you’re moving in public?
EELI: I think I do it more in public, because I feel like at home it doesn’t matter. I feel like
because I think in public, I’m in the eyes of the public, I feel like I have to defend or—
I suppose there are opportunities and dangers of having to defend—or I suppose there are
opportunities slash dangers of having to defend myself as I am in public spaces. Whereas
at home, I live alone. I don’t have to do that, so it doesn’t matter. I feel like I’m more at
peace at home and I don’t necessarily have to have that reassurance all the time. Whereas
I think in public, when I have to decide what I wear, how I present myself, how I address
myself to other people or allow other people to address me, I think I need that extra
reassurance of like, “It’s OK, you’re fine.” Whereas at home I don’t need to do that,
necessarily.
Joan uses zhe/zher pronouns, is pansexual, polyamorous, and genderfluid, and zhe is
Black. On a hot summer day in July of 2023, we donated a wagonful of clothes to
a consignment shop before taking a walk around Joan’s Lakeview neighborhood, in
Chicago.
JOAN: Well, I guess, I guess I am listening to more Black artists in general, because when
I was younger, I would listen to like Motion City Soundtrack, and Evanescence, and the
Used, and you know like cry in the corner. And, since you know the whole George Floyd
stuff, and you know all the Black Lives Matter, things that have come out of that. I’m like,
“What if I did more Black things?” So I probably would categorize [the music I listen to] as
Black-er.
ANNE: Sure. How does it feel to listen to that music in the street?
JOAN: Kind of feels like I’m getting away with something.
ANNE: Right, yeah.
JOAN: Because I like, I like to rap along with it sometimes. And you know, walking down
the street rappin’, people look at you crazy! My favorite is to do that going down
Southport because it’s just like so white. They’re like, “What are—what are you doing?”
I’m like (motions clawing) “neener neener!” (Both laugh) (Aside) Oh hey, what’s up!
That’s my downstairs neighbor.
ANNE: Hi neighbor! (Both laugh)
Kolysh speaks in depth about the importance of intersectionality within studies of
everyday queer experiences on the street, and the significance of the race and class
inequalities that shape interactions in the creation of unstable and unsafe built environ-
ments.24 For Joan, music allows for a physical shift in presentation and physical action,
where listening to Black artists and rapping on the street feels like “getting away with
something.” Others view Joan as “crazy” in these moments, and zhe is aware but con-
tinues almost in spite of this. Here, this music creates a small space for the queer
individual to transgress upon, when the larger expanse of physical public space over-
whelms. Joan’s private music extends outward, interrupting the soundscape of the city
street with zher chosen, representational music.
What happens when queers of color saturate the normative, sonic streetscape?
PERSONAL SPACE
“I feel it almost like exists in my entire body, in almost like an aura around it as well.”
I title this section after Goffman’s territory of the self “Personal Space,” or “the space
surrounding an individual, anywhere within which an entering other causes the individual
to feel encroached upon, leading [them] to show displeasure and sometimes withdraw.”25
While Goffman speaks only of physical space, this exploration will extend the term to include
imagined space, where an imagined space or feeling of space improves experiences in the
public. This phenomenon described by Eeli above, when private music creates the conditions
for fantasizing about a dreamworld or an alternate reality, is shown in select sections of
scholarship since Bull’s 2001 writings on Walkman users.26 Stone-Davis describes the
phenomenon of music’s ability to create the feeling of physical space and coins the term
world-making, stating:
The interaction between the subject and her environment, the process of world-making
(which occurs both physically and imaginatively), happens within music as well. It does
so by virtue of music’s mode of existence, which involves thresholds . . . that which is
most significant about thresholds is not the moment of crossing but the relation that is
brought about at the instant before that crossing, since it is here that binaries such as
“inside” and “outside,” “subject” and “object,” are transcended, brought into relation,
and held in tension.27
Stone-Davis’s liminal world-making elicits an interplay between the physical public and
the bounds of the ears and mind. Through this understanding, the individual stands at
the margin of the boundary between the body and the environment, and between the self
and the other.28 Where Stone-Davis’s writings are theoretical and not based in experi-
enced data or in accounts of headphone listening, the below responses can be framed in
this understanding. For Eeli, this physical boundary, or edge of Stone-Davis’s limen,
creates a dreamworld, as cited in Bull’s Walkman article, where they are able to exist
as they wish—free from the confines of physical closeness and social judgment.
We spoke about this dreamworld, or “aura” or “fantasy world,” on a busy Edinburgh
double-decker bus, where personal space is particularly lacking. We are crammed between
an abundance of commuters and tourists, in a fashion that makes existing queer especially
burdensome.
EELI: I always feel like my—because I feel like I don’t necessarily count, like if I had to
describe myself in five words, I don’t think creative would be one thing, but I always feel
like my creativity exists in my imagination. I feel like when I listen to particularly music
that is really, really hitting the feeling that I have and allowing me to process, something
that I really need to process or feel in my head, I feel it almost exists in my entire body, in
almost like an aura around it as well. So, even if someone is sitting next to me in the bus
for example, I’m in a tight space. I feel like it does exist like an inch outside my body, as
well. Almost like a barrier that is allowing me to exist as I wish in my head, but also my
full body. If that makes sense, I feel like I’m trying to make a very emotional thing very
logical, but it’s not. It’s like, it’s almost like I’m allowing myself to fantasize a world or like
a good feeling even, in my full body, and because I wear over-the-ears headphones it
particularly feels—it especially feels like I’m sort of shutting out the entire world and
living that sort of like—like my whole physical being in a different world.