When we start to listen, we start to hear. We pay attention to the sounds that we might normally tune out. Sometimes this means that we hear the things that are not working, and we start to realise that sounds we feel we cannot control, we maybe can. The squeaky door just needs some WD40. The shouty neighbour needs more drastic action – which in my case was moving house, but maybe other interventions might have worked.
There is a metaphor here. Everything that disturbs our well-being can be thought of as “noise”. We have a tendency to tune out our problems, rather than listening to them. If we listen to what is troubling us, internally as well as externally, we may better understand what is making that ‘noise’. Then we have an opportunity to do something about it.
Perhaps we can do something that reduces or eliminates the noise (i.e. fixes the problem) or perhaps we can do something that enables us to take a step back from it, reduce our exposure to it.
Reducing our exposure can mean being less in the environment where the noise exists, or it can mean dampening the impact of the noise. Soundproofing if you will. Neither of these strategies reduce the noise, they do nothing to solve the actual problem, but they can reduce the impact it has on us. We hear it, dimly, but are not disturbed by it.
This is the approach that I take with much of the negativity that is thrown my way by the media, and friends who soak themselves in the media, and (to be fair) those who have genuine concerns about life, the universe and everything. I cannot fix the problem. I cannot turn the dial down to reduce the noise. I can ‘soundproof’ myself against it.
Tuning out would be an option here. I could just filter it out, but if I do that, then I miss the real information, the useful gems buried in the silt. Such an approach would also mean that I am not present for the people who need me to be. I cannot be empathic if I’m not listening. I need to listen. I need to hear. Just, for my own well-being, not all the time and not at full volume. I can be selective.
In the final analysis, however, there will always be things that are well beyond anything that we can do about them. We can try to ignore them or ‘tune them out’ / ‘filter them out’, which is really just allowing the noise to be there and pretending that it isn’t. We can get very good at this. We can get to a point where we do not consciously hear the aeroplanes overheard or the hum of the fluorescent light. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of continuous effort, and that might be energy we have better uses
for.
The second "try this" on the Listening Path is the “three sounds” exercise. It requires that we quickly jot down three sounds that we have no control over, to notice how they make us feel, and then to consider whether we have options other than simply ‘tuning them out’.
The workbook asks us if those sounds make us feel frustrated, or anxious, or nervous. I’m intrigued by that assumption. Somewhere along the line over the last few years, the dial on our western default setting seems to have been turned way down into the negative. I know there is a lot of trauma and difficulty and risk and destruction in the world. But there always was. If we look, there is also a lot more positive action, a lot more curiosity and questioning – not just protesting the wrong, but also doing things to make it better.
For me there is a conscious choice involved in how we look at the world. Without being a unrealist refusing to understand how the world works right now, I still choose to turn the dial to towards the positive whenever I can. So, the assumption that when quickly noting down three sounds that I cannot control will produce three irritations, is completely wrong.
Obviously, this is in part because my life is quieter and calmer and freer than most, I get that. Assuming you are not where I am, I would still suggest that if you do this exercise, try to start in neutral. Don’t begin with the assumption that your soundscape is a noise-scape. Don't assume that everything beyond your control is necessarily horrible. That's simply not true. In fact, I'd wager that the vast majority of joy and beauty and wisdom in your life is also beyond your control.
Recognising that makes surrendering to what is, a whole lot easier.
I will start with the negative though.
The one sound that really disrupts my sense of ‘all is well with the world’ is the roar of the military jets. Living in East Anglia this is not an occasional occurrence. I use the word “roar”. That applies in the best of circumstances when they are just passing by overhead. More often, the more appropriate word would be “scream”. They circle the city. Or the stand on their tales with their afterburners firing directly down at us. The noise is all encompassing for minutes at a time. And it is frightening. It is frightening because this is just two or three (usually three) jets on practice runs. I try to imagine what a whole squadron would sound like in battle mode.
It's not a difficult imagining. East Anglia is still partly an aircraftcarrier. When we are at war anywhere in the world – which, believe it or not, is most of the time – and you live on or near the flightpath of the bases, then you know when the shift change happens. You will wake in the early hours, or be still awake late at night, and hear the higher-sky dull, only slightly muted, roar of the jets on a steady flight path. Not the three playing chase games and attack manoeuvre simulations, which is low and loud and short-lived. Instead, it is a continuous noise…you cannot separate out individual planes to know how many there are…you hear it as a flock, with an approaching edge of the first couple of planes, and it continues and continues and continues until the after edge
eventually fades away.
Shift change. A squadron flying out, another flying home. I try to think about the pilots and the families waiting for them. But I fail. I think about the politics. I think about whether it is worth it. I think about how I will feel if things get out of hand, and this becomes a noise I might have to listen to night after night. I remember to be grateful that (so far) I am beyond the theatre of operations.
There is nothing I can do about the prescence of this noise. I can try to ignore it. Or I can choose to think about it. Sometimes I do one thing, sometimes the other.
That is an exception, however. Most of the sounds that I cannot control are genuinely welcome. Birdsong. Rain-song. Stream-song. Wave-song. The music that happens to be playing if I switch the radio on. The tapping sounds of my keyboard as I type this. The gurgle-fizz of pouring a cold drink. The sizzle of raw food as it hits the pan.
Even the door that squeaks, the hum of the extractor in the bathroom and the different note of that over the hob in the kitchen. Muted traffic on the ring-road. Sudden sirens of police or ambulance. The (thankfully infrequent) wail of the fire engines from the station just a street away. I notice these things. I would not count any of them as particularly pleasant. Sometimes the suddenness of them jars, makes me jump or flinch, but there is another part of me that simply accepts them. I don’t tune them out. I notice them and allow them their space in my world.
The sirens clear the way for the emergency services to get there quickly, and it I were the one waiting for them, that is what I would want. Traffic is the world working, which for all its faults feels more promising than the world at standstill.
I think I would find my home a bit spooky if everything were smooth and silent in operation. If the fridge stopped making its belching condensing noises, or its soft hum the rest of the time, or if my office chair didn’t creak when I sat on it, if I couldn’t hear the errant birds or bees hitting the window panes, or the snap of a bra strap as I pull it up, or the stretching and settling creaks of the building at either end of the day, the crunch or crack or squeak of vegetables being prepared on the chopping board, the ticking of the clock, the rustles and scrapes of everyday living, it would feel less like home.
In writing this piece I begin to realise just how little of my soundscape I do control.
Some sounds, like the keyboard, could be changed or muted. I seem to remember that soft keyboards were a thing, maybe they still are, but I like the clacking. Perhaps it is because I was brought up with typewriters, long before PCs, but every click or clack or muted thud (each key
has a slightly different tone) is a tiny satisfaction: an audible confirmation of action executed. Like a footstep. A movement forward. The point is that I do not want to control these sounds. I am grateful to hear them: grateful that I can literally hear and grateful for what the sounds tell me.
Ah, but there. Notice that. I have stopped talking about noise and started talking about sound. That is the distinction that we make. Sounds, we approve of. Noise, we disapprove. We label what we hear accordingly: song, music, sound, noise. And all the words that fit in between.
I love this exercise – but not necessarily for the prescribed reasons. The idea is to identify things that are wrong, and figure out whether you can make them better. For me the exercise takes me down the other path, the one that shows me all the beautiful and ordinary sounds that weave themselves around me on a daily basis. Sounds that I do not orchestrate, but that make me smile.
I hear children playing at school break-times. Laughter from somewhere over the fences. A bell. A song from a passing car. I hear the sound of my own breathing, which I might wish were quieter but at least proves I am still breathing. Sometimes I hear someone speak my name. I hear my telephone ring. A gull screech or a crow’s craik is as beautiful to me as a robin’s melody. Being able to hear anything at all is a blessing, and we have a measure of choice in how we interpret what we hear. We can choose to listen or to ignore. Listening is likely to be more productive.
