Soundscapes
I still remember the first book they read as a directed reading. While in high school. I was a drummer and although I did not understand the relation between my instrument and my hearing I think that my teacher who was wiser did. He loaned me a textbook that had been given to him while in college by the author. A concept really. I’m not going to bore you with details but the overlying subject was something called sound escapes. You can look it up. We live in an environment where it is increasingly difficult to find silence. Industry has gone so far has to make noise cancelling headphones part of our standard toolkit. From time to time based on what I learned in that textbook I take a few moments to actually listen to the world around me. Today as an example I had an eye appointment. Afterward I ended up sitting in the middle of a woodlot simply listening to the world around me. It takes a while for your brain to tune in the new sounds. First of all the big trucks going by outside. And then the sound of someone hammering on a roof across the fields. Only after this had gone I was able to hear the different sounds of birds who were doing what birds do best. I did not stay there long enough to record all the sounds that I heard but I did take the time to listen and that is the real lesson here. If we do not listen we cannot hear and if we stop listening there are sounds that we will never hear. Think of the effect of the jet airplane which has given a new way of covering up the sounds of the environment. Not just at the end of a landing strip but as they pass overhead while I sit in a woodlot. I will go back to another place to listen soon because this is one of those things that you must exercise. And yes, I have reread the book after all these years because we tend to forget the little details while keeping the larger ones. Things that get covered up in the noise of our lives.
