Too muddled to listen today. I'm sure I've heard so many sounds, but I didn't really hear them.
I’m working on a soundtrack and I open the window and let the heavy rain join in.
A sound system on the beach - distorted and straining, but I like it as the indeterminable music rolls across the pebbles.
The whoosh of pressured water and electrical hum give way to a solitary pigeon, its call echoing around the hall.
A crackly harmonic.
I'm sat in the pump house office. Katie is tapping at plastic keys and nearby occasional clangs of metal and clattering industrial vehicles blur with closer soft computer UI tones.
I lean on vibrating damp railings, and I feel connected to the machine, the sea, this space.
The rhythm is a bit like two cars passing on wet roads with a gap of about three seconds.
Deep hums and mechanicals.
Outside a connected part of the system whooshes and hisses intermittent, aggressive and highly pressurized.
That two part whooshing sequence moves underneath me from left to right. I smell mechanical grease and salty sea water.
Glistening water seeps from within the stained grey case of pump one.
Has the smell of the sea got stronger, I seem to notice it more now.
The whooshing is hypnotic.
And then it stops.
Dripping, running water and space. An electrical whine comes and goes, pulsing.
The water emptying, running out, distant voices, flushing. A staff member says hi.
As the wet sounds recede, they are replaced by birdsong. It grows as if it is taking back the high frequency space recently dominated by the hiss of the pressurized water. What do the birds make of the sound here?
A toilet flushes. We're in the world of moving, flowing water where occasional rumbles from below vibrate like a water dragon. It feels very much like a living, breathing beast.
I return to recorder to find a Disc Full message. Sums up how I'm feeling.
Servos sucks the silver disc in, and I hear soft gurgling for a while as the machine searches for contents which it doesn't find. A short pitch slide down like a record being stopped, and then it sits silent.
Pressing burn instigates high pitched spinning and whirring.
Waves crash in an old church. Little Terns squawk there too.
Wet movements within the inaccessible, transported elsewhere.
For a moment, a confusion created by unexpected sounds, then frustration when technology fails and I can't work out why.
A cupboard of religious robes smells just as expected - musty and old fashioned. I'm surprised at how many are packed in there.
Two microphones hung over pews feed the church back through the speakers. Dusty room tone recycled. A religious feedback circuit. Sounds thrown unexpectedly from source via microphone to speakers hung on the ceiling.
The vicar tells me about the time he rang the church bell for 30 minutes on the anniversary of the Shoreham Airshow crash. It's tiring and takes careful control of the timing.
Echo's voice distorted by tiles and plastic curves. Gentle liquid sounds splashing and dripping. Flesh moves against plastic, water making it squeak and squawk.
Echo's gentle child voice sings a few notes in between the usual bath time frictions.
There can't be many sonic signatures as familiar as bath time. The acoustics, their impact on voices and the water.
Repetitive straining, a mechanism not functioning as it should.
Those wet squeaks again, like a balloon.
A vibrating brush enters the mouth cavity and formants. Vowels appear O-U-E-E-O-U-E-E-O-U-U broken by spits.
Another wet sound closer to me, a soft tongue lapping at bristly fur.
Dense fabric wraps around.
The swish of light fabric.
Pumping a fine mist.
A brush through soft hair sounds so scratchy, the motion repeats again and again. Short, swift moves. Echo sings, ‘I'm still standing', then even quicker at the tips. The roughness lessens becoming smoother, then lighter, teasing, barely audible, each brush followed by a flutter.
Revisiting old spaces of listening.
A trickle of voices become a deluge. Amongst the noise details - rubber soles scuff concrete, crackling plastic bags, birdsong directs attention to the blue sky.
Walking Echo to the bus stop after school, showing him one of the routes he can take home. The noise of close passing cars and memories of my own fearful walks home from school making me anxious and stressed.
Now I can hear him happy, chatting away to a new friend as they play fortnight. His voice just audible, transmitted through air and structure.
I'm nervous about Friday's sound walk, but I've enjoyed swimming in the warm water.
A siren wails in the distance, and I sense it approaching, my mind imagining its route before I see it. As it appears and climbs Manor Hill, the ladders on the fire engine's roof rattle loosely.
An ice cream truck's jaunty tune reverberates around the causewayed enclosure.
A dog owner's calls alert me. A childhood fear of dogs so easily triggered and I'm watching carefully for the animal.
The wind is bitter up on Whitehawk Hill tonight and the cold gets into me. I'm in no mood for listening.
I've noticed a rhythmic, mechanical sound coming from the port. Victoria mentioned it today as well. I don't know how to feel about this as I've spent so long recording and listening at the port, enjoying the sounds there. For this sound to feel like an unwelcome intrusion is confusing. I'm noting it here, and will continue to examine the sound and my feelings about it. A reminder that not everyone is privileged to share my position of listening.
I'm full of nerves as I prepare to lead a session of listening. Will I say the right things? Will I say the wrong things? Will I look stupid and on and on. Within this turmoil, I have to find space to listen. I have to take my hands off the controls and trust. I also accept that putting myself out there holds the risk of looking stupid, but that's okay. These are the risks that make life interesting.
Group listening reflections.
Only the highest frequencies of birds, nothing can punch through it, the traffic all seem like conflict. Leaves. There's the distinct and the blur. The national and the international. A giant holding it up and those thuds are its heartbeat. The privilege of listening like being on holiday. Aircraft remind me of war. Soaking up, swallowing, eating a sound corridor. Deja vu sounds, family memories, sitting on top of the slope under the flyover smoking weed. Imagining sounds, the ones you can't hear because of the noise - feathers and a little cat and its paw sounds. Rocks, natural versus concrete. Being bats today. A sense of place like a cathedral. Robin, Crow, Jackdaw, Blackbird. Strips of sound. Hot and cold sounds. Sharp, muffled. You never hear what you expect to hear, Cars out of phase. A mystery, skipping sound that later turns out to be rubbish, blown by the cars.
I read an article in The Guardian about Eton and a teacher encouraging state schools to do more debating. It makes me think about how listening is so overlooked. Listening always assumes the passive role, like it just happens, so we don't need to practice it. I wish the balance was the other way round.
A sports car bullies its way past, vibrating and rocking my parked car. A brief roar dopplers past, and then it's gone.
I heard a whistle that sounded artificial, echoing off the mid century concrete of Hove Town Hall.
A slow hiss of a sliding door. Then that whistle again. The slow hiss of the sliding door opening is noticeably different from the closing. The hiss is at a lower pitch, the duration shorter.
A new Whistler approaches, maybe attracted by the first. He passes, his whistle moving from left to right, and then disappears passing his whistling friend.
A car alarm starts and then stops, and I hear the brief echo of the multi story car park.
Automatic doors release a variety of footfalls driven by lunchtime hunger. Vape aroma drifts sweet and sickly and dry leaves crackle over concrete and then settle.
People listen to me this afternoon, I notice the power of my lived experience, even if it is uncomfortable to share it sometimes.
A sharp concertina collapse, mechanism folding.
I remember feeling self conscious about crunching tortilla chips during last night's talk, wondering if the person sat next to me could hear.
Panic leads me to a quiet space away from all the voices and the pressure to say things. All those words are squashed and muffled by thick walls.
I'm about to do some uncomfortable listening.
Woken by a storm, the rain so intense I could sense it coming, the power of it almost frightening. Three waves of intensity, each roaring louder than the last, a sense of each approaching.
There is the sea and its familiar and easy to locate movement, and then the roar, less easy to define spatially. It seems to come from the air above the sea.
Noise blasts threaten my ears. An odd arrangement of speakers, plastic cracks against concrete, and after the fourth time, I'm still wondering what I've broken.
A rough night listening to my body warn me.
It will soon be time for less talking, and space for a bit more listening.
A long distance click, a reminder of social distancing times. Acoustics and resonances from a difficult space. Artificial bird tweets transmitted hundreds of miles.
I noticed the internal hum in my ear and I try covering it to hear what, if any difference it makes. It has the effect of listening in a shell, a new rumble and a strange decoupling sound as I pull my hand away - electronic, sci- fi in nature.
In the moment of deepest listening, my back connects to the chair, and it creaks and clicks, forming a counterpoint to the regular rhythm of the clock’s ticking.
A meeting about listening, examining the power of it amongst the noise assault of a coffee shop. His quiet voice almost drowned out by the busy soundscape. It makes me listen more closely.
In Victoria's dream, my snoring becomes a helicopter.
Lucy drew my attention to the way Neolithic Cannibals sounded noticeably different in the softer acoustics at the Rose Hill venue.
I'm struck by the power of vulnerability. How when I open up I feel the connection.
A low hum sat between and underneath everything.
Stone tape, Listening to stone. Inquisitive about what we might uncover when we expand our listening. How tuning into materials connects us on a deeper level, Blake Baxter and underground resistance. Resistance through sound. Uprising. The submerged surfacing. The political and social. My way in. beginnings. The landscape listens, touching the softness and kindness. The balance.
Crackling rolls to determine our fate transmitted through the digital ether
That rhythmic tapping from somewhere, is increasingly distracting. I need to search out the source. Knowing will help. Also, it's much louder downstairs much louder.
Your care for words are as deep as the listenings themselves. It’s inspiring to read.