ABSTRACT
Set in motion by listening to the music of Alexander Goehr, this chapter concerns a phenomenon that disrupts mind-wandering while accounting for its spontaneity: distraction. It is about one of the mechanisms underlying mind-wandering rather than its phenomenological content. This chapter recuperates distraction, configuring it as “drag” in order to analyse it as more than merely bad or failed listening. Dragging the listener back onto her body, distraction emphasizes indeterminacies that, although covered over by the traction generated by regular and consistent listening, are always already embodied within the materiality of musical sound. This chapter concerns the extent to which distraction forces the listener to stretch herself between “listening despite distraction” and “distracted listening."
