Near Presence #2 - Song of a place

Sounds into words

Hello again, it’s been a month. Longer than planned, but I’m still getting into the groove of things.

One of my favourite books on listening is the straightforwardly-named The Listening Book by W.A. Mathieu. There’s a chapter in it called ‘Symphonies of Place’, and it talks about a practice of simply writing down what you’re hearing. By translating sounds into words, you become more aware of your surroundings, and can expand your sound horizon way beyond what your brain normally registers as ‘foreground sounds’. If you’re able to flip your thinking for a minute and think of everyday sounds as a song, it can bring joy even to the simplest soundscapes.

I recommend you try this out, or if you’re not writing it down physically, mentally note the things you hear at that moment.

Here’s one I wrote the other day:

I’m walking the dog

Someone is cutting a tree with a chainsaw

Busy traffic below, the squeaking of a car’s brakes

A couple chirps from a bird

I walk further

The traffic noise lets up, more birds

Plane overhead, its sound rises and wanes

Chatter and a laugh from a run club across the park, someone says ‘come out to the sun’

Thud of our dog’s paws on grass, then their clacking on concrete as we stroll

Faint dog barks, the swooshing of a bird’s wings as they fly past

A mysterious machine sound from the right, its drone makes an almost perfect I-V power chord

Loosely based on Mathieu’s term, I’m calling these ‘Songs of places’, and I just write them into my phone occasionally. I find that this habit alone makes me a more conscious listener even when I’m not actively jotting down a ‘song’.

Sound #2

I recorded a lot more sounds in this past month than I usually do, largely thanks to this newsletter. Here’s one of me standing on a street corner, while passersby suspiciously eye me and my recorder.

There are a lot of layers in this one, so I encourage you to listen multiple times and focus on individual elements. What are the children doing? How far away are they? What kind of shoes is the person walking by wearing? Can you trace how the siren moves over the course of the recording?

Until next time,

Bye