Silences And Sounds

One of the things that shows up again and again in early devotional books is instruction that feels, at first glance, almost excessive. “...

The woods are many things: peaceful, calming, multi-hued, and (in my memory) often silent. But that mental shorthand is a mistake. That for...

Bells, chants, prayers, the scrape of chairs at table, the hum of a vacuum, the splash of a sink being plunged: the soundscape of Goldenste...

My morning walks in Kathmandu (taken back in June 2025) had me thinking a lot about the ways in which spaces become sacred. Every fifth buil...

An auditory distraction — a crying baby, a ringing phone — hits like a punch to the gut, instantly demanding our attention. But recent stud...

From Delhi , I traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal , where we had a hotel just two blocks from Durbar Square. My host picked me up from the airpor...

Tufted titmouse with a call-out saying tweetle tweetle tweetle In What the Robin Knows , Jon Young suggests that we all follow the practice ...

An image of Chaco Canyon ruins from 2012 Note: The current blog post is in dialog with Primeau and Witt (2018), and draws on my own wander...

A 3-way Venn diagram of Individual, Sound and Environment Stratoudakis, Constantinos and Kimon Papadimitriou 2007. “A Dynamic Interface for...

  Bulgy enlargement of ear canal signaled by black arrows (from Flohr and Kierdorf 2022) This post is a response to (and a brief meditation...

A cylinder ("smooth") and a spiky call-out box ("spiky") As I have sought to be more intentional in my listening (and as...

Earlids of the early 1900s (with image of an ear) The question of earlids being on my mind, and the airport being boring so boring, I decid...