Another great article, Kim. Last year I attended a tennis tournament. We were sitting outside, on metal bleachers and it was hot and bright, so bright I closed my eyes when we first sat down. Tennis games are usually visual, but closing my eyes left me more open to everything: the sound of the ball, obviously, hitting racquets and the ground, but also the sound of feet on surface, and the players breathing and exclaiming. I could hear the crowd reacting, sounds from outside our court, a plane flying overhead. It was like a world opened. I heard nothing that I wouldn’t normally hear, but, with my eyes closed, I heard it differently. With deliberation I did the same thing later that afternoon, at a game inside a stadium, and heard similar sounds, but with a completely different ambience (different acoustics from the building, more people, players further away, but the experience of hearing the game rather than seeing it was fascinating. I’ve spent time listening carefully in different places in my neighbourhood; it’s difficult, because I’m downtown and mostly I hear construction and traffic, but there’s an ambience that’s different depending on where I am: the quiet of a cemetery, voices floating at a park, water over rocks at some rapids in a nearby river. The world talks to us, and it’s so, so, so easy to miss it.
I’m still thinking about gestures, and how the natural world responds to its own environment; your grape leaf analogy is brilliant. Food for thought.
Another great article, Kim. Last year I attended a tennis tournament. We were sitting outside, on metal bleachers and it was hot and bright, so bright I closed my eyes when we first sat down. Tennis games are usually visual, but closing my eyes left me more open to everything: the sound of the ball, obviously, hitting racquets and the ground, but also the sound of feet on surface, and the players breathing and exclaiming. I could hear the crowd reacting, sounds from outside our court, a plane flying overhead. It was like a world opened. I heard nothing that I wouldn’t normally hear, but, with my eyes closed, I heard it differently. With deliberation I did the same thing later that afternoon, at a game inside a stadium, and heard similar sounds, but with a completely different ambience (different acoustics from the building, more people, players further away, but the experience of hearing the game rather than seeing it was fascinating. I’ve spent time listening carefully in different places in my neighbourhood; it’s difficult, because I’m downtown and mostly I hear construction and traffic, but there’s an ambience that’s different depending on where I am: the quiet of a cemetery, voices floating at a park, water over rocks at some rapids in a nearby river. The world talks to us, and it’s so, so, so easy to miss it.
I’m still thinking about gestures, and how the natural world responds to its own environment; your grape leaf analogy is brilliant. Food for thought.