chora
In The Rhetoric of Cool, Jeff Rice (2007) described chora as an argumentative and narrative strategy that uses pattern making and pattern generation. Chora's logic, Rice (2007) argued, isn't a print logic; it's based instead on connectivity, on identifying unexpected juxtapositions, on interlinking. Likewise, Sarah Arroyo (2013) defined chora as an inventional methodology that is felt, not reasoned, that is emotional and associational, not logical. Thomas Rickert (2007) traced the history of chora in rhetorical theory, recounting several histories. Chora once connoted place, it was often dismissed as mystical, it addressed "the question of the available means of creation" through expanding definitions of invention, and it often included affect, environment, and social and informational networks (pp. 257–263). According to Rickert, who cited Gregory Ulmer, a "choric rhetorician will attend to memory, networks, technologies, intuitions, and environments" (p. 267). Through chora, then, we compose and feel out meanings from diverse materials, patterns, emotions, bodies, and memories.
"Singer, Writer: A Choric Exploration of Sound and Writing," in its final form, is both a further elucidation of chora for rhetoric and composition studies and writing classrooms and an illustration of choric invention using multiple modes of expression. I repeat, join with, build from, and enact Arroyo's (2013), Rice's (2007), and Rickert's (2007) theorizations and histories of chora. I compose, in the video, associationally. I feel, I remember, I connect.
In December 2014, I sat in an auditorium listening to a Christmas performance of George Frideric Handel's Messiah. Like Brahms, Handel employed a fugue structure in many choruses in the Messiah, where the various voice parts repeat or imitate a melodic theme, entering successively. I have performed the Messiah as a member of the chorus many times, but my experience sitting in the auditorium that December was markedly different from singing the oratorio. As a part of the audience, I could hear and see the fugue entrances—the basses in the center of the choir beginning a melody line, the tenors to the right entering a few bars later, but higher. Then the altos, the women on the far right, even higher, and last, the sopranos on the left, notes soaring to the rafters, fortissimo. The fugue theme bounced about the choir, repeating and readjusting, the parts split and then rejoined. Fugue, it turns out, became a useful organizational device for "Singer, Writer," a way to organize the choric voices. The video passes themes from one voice to the next and sings its messages in unison and then in overlapping succession. In places, the fugue is audible; in others, it's visible. The fugue clashes, crescendos, and then recedes.
Choric invention—with fugue, with words, with video footage—is also a bodily experience, much like singing. Debra Hawhee (2006) described rhetoric as a bodily art, as extra-discursive, even nonrational. She stated that rhetorical action "transpires through bodies, spaces, and the visual as much as it happens through the presumed twin-media of rhetoric—the written and spoken word" (p. 163). Music, in particular, brought out such extra-discursive, bodily rhetorical action during this project. I listened to and worked around clips from Brahms, swaying to and fro, humming. I laughed, and got a little choked up, feeling emotion well up through my nose and eyes. The notes and associated memories were meaningful, moving. Later, I was sweating; then I sat mesmerized, unmoving. I slouched, felt tired, leaned forward, needed a rest. I composed with my hands, mouth, ears, and body. Mary Hocks, in her portion of the 2013 Computers and Writing presentation, and Steph Ceraso (2014) have both pointed out that sound, perhaps more than other modalities, is truly a multisensory act as it vibrates in our eardrums, bodies, and bones. Ceraso (2014) called listening a multimodal event that involves "the synesthetic convergence of sight, sound, and touch. That is, sound is often experienced via multiple sensory modes—it can be seen, heard, and felt" (p. 104). The sounds and music I saw, heard, and felt in "Singer, Writer" became part of such multimodal, multisensory, choric meaning-making moments.
As my process narrative indicates, chora was not a concept I set out to explore with this project at the outset. Reading Arroyo (2013), Rice (2007), and Rickert (2007) while I revised, though, opened up new juxtapositions and allowed me to name the inventional process I was experiencing. I put two or three pieces together—a quotation, an image, a poetic line—I felt them out. I created links across modes, and then I broke them. I used my voice and my body, my face. I used my own memory and the built-in memory of the camera and the microphone. I listened to a recording of the St. Matthews choir, and I sang along in real time. I thought back to the Choral Union's Brahms Requiem performance, to the Messiah, and to Hocks and Shipka's C&W presentation, remembering. I recorded myself revising and editing, and then I edited and revised those images of myself revising. I used one piece to lead to the next, to place on top of the next, to speak with and away from the next.
I encourage you—as reader, listener, viewer—to experience such choric invention as you re-watch and re-hear "Singer, Writer." Invent meanings, find juxtapositions, and make personal, bodily associations with what you see and hear. Listen, and look. Be confused, excited, frustrated, moved. Thomas Rickert (2007) stated that "there is a movement to invention" in the choric space (p. 270). I invite you to feel and hear and see the movement.