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| The bench |
In this listening exercise, we were
asked to select a familiar place in which to sit with a notebook for ten
minutes and “closely observe the sounds around [us].” I chose the bench on the
back porch of our house. I walk past that bench many times every day and I’ve never taken the time to just sit on
it before. In the ten minutes of this listening exercise, I learned that I have
been ignoring a lot more than just the bench.
The
first thing I noticed after I started my timer was the sound of the warm wind
blowing through the neighbors’ white pine trees. The sound was long, smooth,
and gentle, but also fairly loud in volume, and its constant undulation
prevented it from blending into the background. It was enveloping, filling
spaces both near and far, and overarched all of my continued observations.
Beneath
the wind, the ducks were murmuring to me from a distance. The sound is very
deep in pitch. A few birds were sending out shrill calls from above. I heard
the neighbor’s dog barking from farther away and to the east; a sound that I
usually try to tune out. Then I heard the light, hollow melody from the bamboo
wind chime hanging in a tree in the back yard. It has been hanging there for
many years, perhaps a minimum of five, and I never register the sound anymore.
It was strange to actually listen to it. It’s a pleasant, rhythmic sound.
I could hear things at different distances relative to me. Cars
were going by on the road. I never notice those either. Their sound was similar to,
and almost blended in with, the wind. A few dry leaves were rustling. I could
hear clinking from the gate latch, and the high pitched, somewhat alarming call
of tree fibers squeaking in the wind. There was the sound of branches high in
the canopy clinking against each other. These are all the normal, “everything
is right with the world” ambient sounds in the yard.
Evidently I had good timing with my
listening exercise, because the train came by. It has rolled by at all hours of
the day and night, at just enough distance as to not be overbearing, for all of
the twenty years I have spent in this house. I grew up listening to it, and I
really do have this sound completely tuned out. Sometimes, as a child, friends
that I had over to play would ask me, “what’s that sound?” and I wouldn’t know
what sound they were talking about. It would be the train.
I sat
there on the bench and listened to the train. I know every sound, but I never really
listen to it. The deep and steady rumble
on the tracks is low and distant and powerfully resonant. I would describe it
as calming, a kind of reassuring background company, like the sound of children
playing in a neighbor’s yard. The horn blew in clusters, a long, blaring, drawn
out musical chord.That's the sound of sleeping with the window open on a warm summer night. The sound of the train is not so much a measure of time passing as it is time standing still.
Finally,
I noticed that the most audibly prominent sound of all was that of my pencil on
the paper as I took notes. Somehow this most obvious sound of all did not even occur
to me until the ten minutes were almost over. Once I had noticed it, the pencil
was clearly the loudest sound around me at the time. It made a hollow tapping
noise when the pencil met the paper, and a rhythmic swishing as I wrote. This
is a sound that I hear every day, and it didn’t even register while I was deliberately listening to things!
I have
learned, in ten short minutes, that my attention is apparently very selective.
