In his chapter Humans taken from Jeffrey Jerome Cohens’ Inhuman Nature (2014), Alan Montrose discusses the intensity of sound as a form of parasite. Here he uses Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale in order to explore a song as a parasitic creature, as a static noise that alters the state of things by interrupting trajectories and reorienting relationships. We can also read this from the point of view of the voice, of the intensity of the voice on the body working as a parasite in relation to it. The voice holds the body captive and uses it to reproduce itself and give a sonic output, the body is an instrument of the voice and is manipulated in various ways in order to continue that reproduction.

‘Once infected, the Prioress’s child unwittingly becomes a captive of music’s indelible need to manifest and reproduce its own being… The Prioress’s boy is simultaneously an instrument for the production of music and a host from which the Alma Redemptoris continues to replicate. Song much rely on the host/ instrument to give shape to its accidental properties.’ (Montrose, 47, 2014).

Chaucer’s story follows a young Christian boy who is ‘infected’ by the hymn Alma Refemptoris Mater, he is then murdered and dumped in a privy by Jews for singing this. But despite being murdered the boy’s body continues to sing post-mortem. Montrose’s reading of this from a sonic viewpoint is interesting and he brings out the notions of intensity to turn the violence away from the human and onto the sound itself. He goes on to discuss the song (or the voice) being in the position of power, able to use its intensity to erupt from the body of the boy in order to be in the world. This intensity is only evidence when the song/ voice is within the host, without the body it is just a crippled object unable to transmit its information. ‘The Alma Redemptoris is the crippled object, relying on the organic body’s mobility in order to transmit its information… The song is the position of power, erupting unexpectedly and controlling the vehicle in order to perpetuate its own beingness in the world.’ (Montrose, 47-48, 2014). This violence within this eruption of the voice from the body is further explored to consider that every sonic event/ voice event can create a physical assault on the body, this can be thought of as a physical representation of the violence of sound. The voice can be viewed as a conflict within the body made up of varying sounds and manifestations competing to force themselves out into the environment. This act itself has an intensity we don’t perceive, but when written down you see the full horror of a process enacted constantly to put the body under conflict. ‘It is the noises themselves that square off as the inherent violence of their withdrawn essences confront each other on the aesthetic plane. It is a battle of wills between two sonic events, with little regard being paid to the status, effects or outcomes their battle will have on the human hosts.’ (Montrose, 53, 2014).

In the end the idea that the song/ voice will continue to proliferate as long as the host body can produce sound, even if that host body is dead, transforms the body in a tool for the song/ voice. Transforming the body into ‘a creature at once part human and part music’ (Montrose, 55. 2014). The body becomes purely sonorous and the body and song transform from something that was only embodied to the two becoming enmeshed together. Again this intensity to proliferate after death can be seen not only in a physical sense of the body, but in our communications and devices. The voice is within our extended network and will continue to be so without the human body there to transmit it. Ultimately this idea of the intensity of the voice and a violent act erupting from the body is interesting to consider alongside my current experiments in the creation of a synthetic voice, exposing this intensity on the body to highlight the processes already at play. Perhaps this coupled with our extensions into technology and the machinic we can begin to expose the true horror of the voice.