Wander|Wonder : Hear

My heart beats with the wings of untold birds, the night call of owls, leaves rustling in the wind, frog calls, and cricket chirp. Our voices intertwined, we are one.

Welcome to the second in this Wander|Wonder series, focused on auditory senses. You can find the first instalment on sight here.

Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves, and they were having trouble with who should be first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are these birds really just that, bells come to us—come to this road in America—let us bow our heads and remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer. Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet, all washed, clasping the air.

~ Mary Oliver, Goldfinches

Sound

We are wired for sound. We are music - our heart’s continual pumping means our entire body is rhythm, a beat and it’s echo, day and night and day and night until we stop our dancing in this life. We can’t escape the beat. Even if we don’t think we can hear it, we can - our brains are just very nifty, and make a point of ensuring we are not distracted by our internal cacophony, because it is much more important for our safety to be aware of what is happening in our external environment.

That internal drum beat means music can be incredibly emotive for us, it resonated on a cellular level. While we are as diverse in our music tastes as we are in any of our other sense preferences, we are all moved by some sort of music, even if it is only the sounds of nature around us.

I have linked an utterly fascinating podcast with Gordon Hempton below, where he talks about our relationship to natural sounds, particularly birdsong:

“So my natural curiosity was to look at the range of human hearing and these equal-loudness contours. And we have a very discrete bandwidth of super-sensitive hearing. And that’s between 2.5 and 5 kilohertz, in the resonant frequencies of the auditory canal.

Is there something in our ancestors’ environment that matches our peak hearing human sensitivity? Because most of what I’m saying right now, except for the “s” sounds and the high-pitched sounds, falls well below that range. And indeed, there’s a perfect match: birdsong. Birdsong.

Why would it have any benefit to our ancestors to be able to hear faint birdsong? Why would our ears possibly have evolved so that we could walk in the direction of faint birdsong? Birdsong is the primary indicator of habitats prosperous to humans. Isn’t that amazing?”

Isn’t that amazing indeed.

When I listened to this part of the podcast, tears sprang to my eyes at that part.

I am personally quite auditory sensitive. Which, as a dedicated head-banger since my pre-teens is quite funny. But I have always loved classical music too - I feel like heavy metal and classical can be every bit as passionate as each other. I like my music loud, or incredibly emotive (I am all about Scandi-folk at the moment), or… not at all. Sometimes sound is just toooo much. Music, talking, modern world environmental sounds, even birds sometimes (though admittedly that is usually because there are too many of them outside squabbling over the seed I put out, or the koels are here for mating season. Seriously, koels, it is too much. Don’t believe me? Listening to this for up to 20 hours a day gets to be a lot sometimes, dear creatures that they are). I bought myself some noise cancelling earbuds recently, and they have been heavenly in dealing with the modern world environmental noise of living in suburbia (but it must be noted that the sound of the koel still gets through, can you believe it!). 

My favourite sounds though, are natural ones. Laying in bed at my grandparents farm, listening to the rural world wake up - sheep, cattle, breezes through gum trees, and currawongs and magpies, always these beautiful songbirds. Being beside the Dudh Kosi river in Nepal, listening to the waters melted from the world's highest peaks literally, metres away, washing smooth glacial rocks, all milky white and pale blue (oh my heart). Walking the Quiraing in Scotland and listening to wind sweeping over moors and craggy rocks, reaching up the cliff faces to steal the breath from my lungs. Trickling water and the breezes through alpine forests in Tasmania. The peep-peep of baby waterfowl at the watershed at the end of the road. The chimes of fairy wren seeking tiny insects among the bushes under my eaves. Walking through the bush at night and hearing soft footfalls of wallaby and possum moving around out of my sight. Seraphina’s contented purrs. The rhythmic sounds of my nearly five-year-old nephew's sleeping breath.

Our brains are very clever at drowning out auditory stimulus it deems as unnecessary, which, just like our ability to not visually observe deeply unless we really stop and concentrate, means we may miss out on little pieces of sound magic all around us. Often it is the natural sounds that are drowned out in our deep focus on the modern work we’re doing hunched over desks and eyes glued to screens. That’s if we even have access to a window that opens and allows the songs of birds and insects and wind and rain to drift to our auditory canals.

Connecting with nature via sound might take a little more ingenuity than our previous exercises around sight, though perhaps not. All it may take is stepping outside for a moment. If you can do so early in the morning, before the rest of the modern world awakes, or in the evening when the neighbourhood kids have gone inside for dinner and there is less traffic around - all the better. You are more likely to hear natural sounds then, if you are in built up areas. If you are unable to head outside, I recommend finding some nature sounds to direct through your headphones (if possible) for a more enveloping stimulus.

Mantra

My heart beats with the wings of untold birds, the night call of owls, leaves rustling in the wind, frog calls, and cricket chirp. Our voices intertwined, we are one.

Wandering

If you are able to get out and about today, walk mindfully, slowly, and listen hard. Amusingly, this is often easier when we close our eyes to reduce that seemingly more primary sense. Please don’t walk with your eyes closed though, I don’t want you to ‘feel’ your environment by coming crashing down onto it! Walk slowly, with eyes downcast to reduce visual stimulus, until you find you can hear something delightful - birds, crickets, frogs, wind through leaves, water, whatever that might be. Stop walking, close your eyes, and just be for a moment. Take all of the sound in, allow it to wash over you and overwhelm your other senses for a bit. Then spend some time splitting the sounds out. What types of birds can you hear, if there is more than one. Where are their calls coming from - what direction, are they in the sky or high up, are they on the ground or in bushes close by? Are they to your left, right, behind, in front. Can you tell how they move about by the way the sound changes? Turn your head to the left, and the right, see if you can follow the sound of a bird in flight. Can you pick out different communication calls - perhaps there are adults and young, perhaps there is general chitter chatter, maybe you hear an alarm call or a gathering call. If there are no birdcalls, what sounds are there? Do you hear the wind through trees? Is there the sound of water? Of ice melting, drip drip drip. Be very open to the sounds, put context to them where you can, but don’t make that a priority if it starts to exclude some of the sound - over concentrating can be a hindrance too. You might like to make a recording on your phone using your voice recording app - then you can come back to the sounds over and again and hear what you may have missed the first time or two.

Wondering

Today's journaling prompt is twofold. 

1. Write about what you were able to hear on your wander (or in your headphones). Use all the descriptive and emotive words you can. Recall what it felt like to shut your eyes and listen. Did it feel a bit scary? Sometimes it can - we are used to feeling safe because we can see, and when we remove that sense the world feels different. How many sorts of birds?

2. Then consider what some of your favourite natural sounds are. Is it birdsong? And if so, what sort of birdsong? Tropical rainforest birds, the call of birds of prey, tiny finches? Is it thunder and rain? Hard rain, light sprinkles? Do you like the sound of wind? Through trees, or across grassy fields? Why do you like these sounds? How do they make you feel? Is there a way you can bring more of these sounds into your life, regularly? It could be as simple as having a nature sounds playlist on in the background when you are cooking. While we are often asked what sort of music we like best, we don’t often consider what natural sounds we like best, that we find soothing or energising.

Auditory observational meditation: Listening to whales

For a fun exercise in wonder and curiosity, sit or lay down in a comfortable position (I like to lay down for this one) and  listen to these whale communication recordings from Dr Roger Payne. While we are wired for birdsong, the calls of deep ocean creatures is not something our ancestors would have been largely privy to. What an honour to hear them now! Use this practice of listening as another observational meditation. How do these conversations make you feel? Even though recorded, they are still so vibratory, don’t you think? When I played this loudly without my headphones, both of my cats came to my studio door with looks of “what in the world?” on their face. I can tell you they largely ignore anything else I play, so this was such a moment of delight to witness. If listening to these beautiful creatures brings up anything you would like to write about, grab your journal and go for it. Perhaps you will be inspired to create whale influenced poetry or music yourself.

Recorded Video

Podcast: 

On Being with Krista Tippett and Gordon Hempton - Silence and the presence of Everything

Playlists:

Hear: Wander|Wonder - a few diverse recordings that I personally find emotive or powerful in some way, something about the music, the lyrics, the voice that tugs a little at my wild heart strings. Maybe one will inspire you too

Songs of Disappearance: Australian Bird Calls

Nature Lab Radio

Until next week then, enjoy your wandering and wondering.

May you hear many marvellous sounds, wild-hearted one!