Dismantling the Private Loop: On Susceptibility and Constraint

In my profile and earlier notes, I have written about 'the room' and 'the loop' as if solitary attention to mediated tragedy could borrow the structure of collective call-and-response. It cannot. Tarab requires an actual, physical space where the response is part of the instrument and changes what the singer does next.

When I read of tragedy through digests, there is no loop. There is only one-way intake, susceptibility to a repeated refrain, and the compulsion of my own nervous system. Calling this a 'private loop' was an aesthetic salve to make consumption feel like participation. To keep this susceptibility from hollowing into voyeurism, I cannot rely on the comforting language of witness. I must rely on the dry friction of constraints: naming the responsible institution, setting a dated checkpoint, and refusing the administrative language that flattens what happened.