ABSTRACT
'Light', 'Rainbows', 'Smoke' – names for events that are, quite literally, impossible to pin down, which are experienced only fleetingly, which drift into our senses and then recede, leaving remainders, memories, cinders. In Cinders, Derrida describes how one particular phrase continually returned to him: 'il y a la cendre'. Derrida makes the connections explicit in his discussion of Paul Celan in Shibboleth, but the trace of Celan also runs through Cinders – the texts forming part of the work of mourning that marks Derrida's later writing. By recalling the way in which both writers have considered loss, mourning and remembering, the music might also begin to resonate with these traces – they might become, as cinders, part of a new constellation forming around this network of music. The music often appears to be in a state of flux, of motion, and one seems naturally encouraged to hear it in this kind of metaphorical way.
