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| A cylinder ("smooth") and a spiky call-out box ("spiky") |
As I have sought to be more intentional in my listening (and as my ear is gradually coming back online from that oh-so-long otitis media), I spent some time gathering samples of sound that struck me in particular ways.
I’ll start with the sounds
Example 1: Rain, in the middle of the night, in a tent:
Example 2: NYC, with honking cars and the murmur of the VERY crowded street:
Example 3: NYC, the background "swoosh" of street noise:
Example 4: LIRR (Long Island Rail) and its clackety clackety:
Example 5: Bird babbles on suburban Long Island:
What is interesting to me is the different emotional import of the various sounds. Rain is entirely soothing (except for the fact that it woke me up!); the randomness of it is restful, and quickly lulled me back to sleep. (It helped that the waterproofing worked!)
The NYC background noise of example 3, on the other hand, has much the same pattern of noise, with a relatively steady state of largely indistinguishable noises -- that city mix of traffic, the building being worked on, the walking noisy crowd, and so on. But the volume of that "swoosh" of noise is read by my viscera as a threat; the sheer volume (running at 70-90 decibels) is a pressure on my soul. Given my 'druthers, I'd rather listen to Example 2, the same ambient noise but with the disruptive honking of an aggressive cab. Why? I suppose it is partly because the spike in sound "fits" with my ground-level assessment of the city. It's at that level of "having a reason" for discomfort -- one can complain about the taxi, but it's harder to justify complaining about background sound -- even if it's nearly overwhelming.
The clacking railroad is back toward the comfortable zone of neutral noises; the cyclic nature of its sound is part of storytelling, after all: I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. Repetition is soothing, when it has a shape. Perhaps that puts the "swoosh" of street noise into context; being shapeless, there's nothing to listen for, just the inevitability of having to listen to the noises in an ongoing, unending way.
And then there's the recording of the bird babbles. These are happy birds (and some random squirrel tussling with a bush, click click), and they aren't particularly loud. There's an up and down to their individual calls, but they layer up as a mass of simultaneity. In music, it would be relatively dissonant; read as nature noises it fits into a category of the familiar. It's soothing, even if the assemblage is about as complicated as that of the city noises, with everyone talking at once.
The
sounds we encounter at random shape us in ways we often don’t always consciously
realize. They thread their way through our emotions and perceptive habits with their
textures, patterns, and (especially) volumes. Reflecting on November's sound
samples, I've been struck by the tangible interplay of smoothness and
spikiness, and especially by how their combinations "read differently" depending on context. Repetition can soothe or grate depending on the narrative we assign it;
randomness too can comfort or unsettle. Context lets us transform
noise into music (sound organized in time) or cacophony (random
unpleasantness), drawing on our emotions to do so. This is why the music sounds in clubs or restaurants can excite some patrons and utterly annoy others; they are placed differently within the internal narrative each listener brings to the moment.
This exercise in intentional listening has reminded me that soundscapes are as much about how we listen as about the sounds themselves. Rain becomes restful because I associate it with shelter and safety; honking cabs feel less intrusive than the city’s unrelenting roar because they narrate a story I can respond to. Even the chaos of bird babbles draws me in, not for its order, but for its vibrant vitality. (That dad’s a birder brings those sounds special meaning, and that’s relevant too!)
Sound, whether smooth or spiky, asks us to tune in—to its rhythms, to the silences (sometimes) interspersed within, and to the ways it resonates within us, both in a physical sense of vibrating WITH the train, and in an emotive sense of what memory/memories it pokes into recollection. Each sound carries its own emotional baggage; in listening carefully, we not only hear the world more clearly but perhaps hear our own inner thoughts as well.
