The Media of Environmental Listening in Don McKay’s Songs for the Songs of Birds

Abstract

Drawing on media ecology and acoustic ecology, this article "reads" Don McKay's audiobook, Songs for the Songs of Birds (2008). The essay explains this audiobook as a meditation on listening and on media and technology, such as headphones and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), that produce an interplay between the natural environments of birds and our built environments. It also contends that various metaphorical abstractions and deterritorializations in the recording and imagery of the audiobook are part of McKay's lament for extinct birds and his concern for threatened species, not only birds but also humans.