After reading the references in the lecture, I want to talk about Abbott, Paul. 2024. ‘Soot. We Grow Music!’ FORUM+. Amsterdam University Press. It is a provocative and poetic exploration of music as an emergent, relational process rather than a static object or product. Abbott, both a musician and writer, presents a deeply embodied and socially embedded view of sound, resisting conventional academic writing in favor of something more experimental—more alive.

The central metaphor of “soot” is both striking and resonant. Soot, the residue of combustion, symbolizes the material traces left behind by intense energy. Abbott uses this image to reframe music not as a clean, composed entity but as something that grows out of the residue of lived experience—historical, social, physical. Music, for him, is not “made” but “grown,” a distinction that radically shifts our understanding of creative practice. This organic metaphor places music in the realm of ecology, care, and vulnerability, rather than control and production.

Abbott’s writing itself mirrors the ideas he proposes: nonlinear, rhythmic, and associative. It often reads like an improvisation—phrases loop, morph, dissolve and re-emerge. He draws connections between sound, touch, breath, speaking, and moving, grounding music in the body and in everyday relational acts. The idea that music is not only a sonic event but a “sensorial politics” is particularly compelling. It invites the reader to consider music as a mode of social engagement and a way of being with others.

Reading this piece challenged and expanded my own understanding of what music can be. Rather than a fixed composition or a formal performance, music becomes a process—messy, shifting, and deeply situated. Abbott’s refusal to separate theory from practice, sound from writing, or art from life, felt urgent and necessary, especially in a time when music is increasingly commodified and algorithmically curated.