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Soundscape

A 'Listening Path' exercise - a day in sound

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I wake to a quiet house. That is no surprise. I deliberately keep my house quiet these days. I love the peace of it. For years I lived with obnoxiously noisy neighbours, so now every time I stop doing what I’m doing and listen and don’t hear screaming and shouting or thudding so-called-music, I breathe deeply and smile and offer out a little prayer of gratitude.

One thing I have noticed now that I live, literally, more quietly is that I hear different things. I hear things I would previously have simply filtered out. I don’t just ‘hear’ them, I interpret them. A simple example: if I wake up and hear the heating pipes, I can gauge what time of day it is.

It is an interesting exercise to start to navigate our days by what we hear and do not hear. For me this started with moving away from the aforementioned neighbours and was then reinforced during the silence of the lock-down years. When all the sounds we had become accustomed to were no longer our backdrop, I for one started to really listen to what I could hear.

As a practice, I didn’t fully embed it, which is why I’m doing this again. But I think it did take a little hold, or I probably wouldn’t be doing this again.

I wake to a quiet house, and lie still for a little while.

The first noise I hear is the whoosh of the boiler firing up. That’s a comforting sound. It means it’s working. During the coldest snap of the year it didn’t work, and I learned some of the other noises it makes…noises that mean ‘help me’ and noises that just mean ‘sorry nope, not playing’. I prefer the gentle whoosh of the pilot light flaming into heat mode.

My bare feet pad around the bungalow on soft surfaces and hard ones. Almost silent on carpets, I flip-flop or squeak-flop across the laminates and vinyl. Paying attention to the sound of my footfall makes me conscious of how I walk, how I hold myself. I stand straighter and try to walk more lightly.

The kettle burbles into life, telling me it is below minimum, asking for more water. I duly oblige with the gurgle sploosh from the tap. It then sets to work, and I listen to the crescendo of boiling that culminates in the click of the automatic switch cutting the power.

There are all the early morning sounds we never share. Ablution sounds. Taboo sounds of bodies doing what all our bodies do, evacuating waste. We don’t want to be heard. We don’t want to listen. It occurs to me how odd that is. I know the state of my own health by what happens in the toilet…and what happens has its own signature tune. If anyone cared to listen (and trust me, I know why you would not!) then they would also have that much knowledge about how I am today. My unslept body does one thing, my poorly nourished body does another, my rested and well-nourished self does something else again. You might think that I am fortunate that I am the only one listening to this orchestra of wellness playing harmony or discord, but I am not sure you’re right.

I settle to my coffee and journalling. There is the scrape of mug on slate coaster by my elbow. The soft hum of pen on paper. The ticking of the mantle clock. It is electric, the tick-tock is possibly fake, but I like to hear it anyway.

Bedmaking is a rustle of fabric smoothing.

Keys rattle as I place them in the locked front door.

The airing cupboard door squeaks as I open it to take out the dirty laundry basket, which scuffs across the floor. I listen to the squeak deliberately today, because I am taking notice, and reflect that I have been aware of it. There must be something about the tenor or tone of the squeak because it does not annoy me. It is simply the sound that particular door makes. Maybe I allow my house it’s personality by not addressing every imperfect thing. Perhaps we all do that. Perhaps we need these sounds of our homes that we recognise – oh that’s the boiler kicking in, oh that’s the fridge, oh that’s the door in the hall – familiar comforting sounds that confirm that, yes, this is home.

I’ve heard people talk about places smelling like home. Perhaps ‘sounding like home’ is also a thing.

Whoosh-gurgle is water swirling into bowls for the hand-wash laundry, with an accompaniment of a deeper hum from the boiler. Its heating-water song is louder than its keeping-you-warm hum.

I listen to the cycle of the machine wash. I only look to the display once my head has heard the wash and spin and rinse and spin and spin, and the final clunk that is the door unlocking.

In the garden I am pulling weeds. It has been wet for weeks so many are pulling long roots with them. There is the low quiet scrunching as those weeds slowly disentangle from the earth until that
barely audible click which is root-snap and the knowledge that I haven’t got it all.

A sudden flip-flap of pigeon wings beating overhead.

The backdrop to my gardening morning is robin and blackbird song. Song means they are safe and doing whatever their bird-lives need. I have heard and know their shriek that will speak of danger: cats on the prowl or magpies scouting out the nests.

Occasionally there is the repetitive two-note intercession of tits from next door’s nesting box.

It is time to tackle the grass patches in the back end. I don’t know what to call that part of my garden. It needs a name. It’s not big enough to be a field, but to call those scrubby bits of grass “lawns” would also be to do disservice to the language. The thrum of the strimmer motor rides up my arms, felt as much as heard. It is followed by the scratching of the rake as I clear up cuttings.

Lunchtime brings the sizzle of chorizo in the pan, a fizzing of cider in the glass, the chink of cutlery on crockery.

As I pause, I listen to the traffic a few blocks away. It is loud enough to hear, but not enough to annoy. The ring road sends me a steady gentle under-roar, almost a purr. On the closer road, that goes up past the end of the close, I can determine individual vehicles. Rather than “traffic” as a conglomerate, I hear tyres on tarmac. It is the audible equivalent of seeing people rather than a crowd. I can’t identify any of them, but I can distinguish between them.

Traffic noise. I remember the silence of the lockdown years. I remember how I liked it and how I also found it strange. Traffic noise is the direct opposite. I have an aversion to it, but I also find it comforting: it means the world out there is functioning again.

Gulls fly over, high and screaming.

There are no jets today.

Wind-chimes tinkle in the breeze. The porcelain has a more delicate tone than the glass. The shells are silent. There is not enough wind to stir them into action.

A sudden chuck-chuck-chuck is a blackbird announcing that it has found next-door’s newly installed feeder station.

Soft aircraft drone, distant: a high-altitude passenger jet, softer by far than the military boys with their toys.

Clunks and bangs suggest my neighbours are building or repairing.

When all else subsides, I catch the hum and buzz of insects.

And when, mid-afternoon, the sun finally blesses us with its warmth, overdue by the forecast, the house stretches like a cat in appreciation, creaking as it does so.

Beyond the fence the Chinese Methodists raise their voices to their god. Hymns that I recognise by their tunes, sung with foreign words. A half-caught memory of Sunday School, transmuted into something deeper. I no longer believe in their dogma, but I feel included in their prayers. And I love to hear their choir, regardless of the words.

Pistachio shells chink back into the bowl. Children laugh somewhere back there by the church and squeal their commands in the language of those hymns and yet I can see the game. It needs no words. Laughter is our lingua franca.

Sounds come and go throughout my day. But there are also the many things I cannot hear, like the tiny-winged insects I mistake for seeds in the breeze until I see that they are flying in different directions. I cannot hear the mimosa finally coming into leaf, or the tiny spider that lands on my arm, or the earthworms turning over the soil. I cannot hear a smile. Or happiness that bubbles inside. I cannot hear a ladybird open her carapace and unfold her wings. Nor any single synapse that fires inside my head.

I cannot hear the sun beginning to wind down for the day, but somehow all the sounds follow. Lowering light and a quietening of the neighbourhood go hand in hand. That too is a blessing of where I now live. If I had written this piece five years ago, my soundscape would have been very different. I know how lucky I am.

I have come back to Julia Cameron’s The Listening Path with an intention to forget about how long it should take and to work through each of the exercises as and when I can devote the time to them. I have also come with an intention to share what comes out of them. Some of these exercises are “try this” things which are one-off’s so far as the programme is concerned.

This was the first “try this” suggestion: to take a day and describe the sound of it. What I learned was that I do not have enough sound-vocabulary. Or maybe there is not enough. Maybe we default to hum and buzz because that is precise enough.

More listening will follow in the weeks to come, without explanation as to why I’m listening. You get that now. Or not. And what occurs will speak to you. Or not.

Go quietly, and listen.