This morning I took a walk, as
I do almost every morning, but this particular time I was on the hunt for
something pretty rare: silence. I did this week’s art assignment, and the task
was to go out and find the quietest place in your neighborhood. This was pretty
easy for me, due to the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere, as they call
it. But it got me to think about all the places, I’ve been, and their sounds.
Maybe it’s because I just got
back from Greece, where I travelled around the Peleponnesos by bus with a gang
of twenty twenty-something nerds. The last time I’d been on a study trip had
been when I was seventeen, and as it turns out, teenage people constantly
produce noise, so when I woke up when we were driving last week, I was startled
that I didn’t hear anything. I looked around, and most of my classmates were
sleeping, or silently reading a book, or having whispered conversations about
their stance on the Homer debate. It made me really happy. I guess that’s one
of the perks of travelling with nerds.
But then again, I spend most
of my time in Amsterdam, a city filled with so many different sounds that it’s
hard to determine what’s what: Passing cars, bikes, scooters, footsteps,
voices, ringing noises, sighs, music, air. And then the other cities I’ve been:
Rome, London, Berlin, Antwerp, Liverpool. They’re all pretty much the same,
noise-wise, except perhaps the languages you hear. (I can only think of one
exception to this rule: I once sat in the Kop stands of Anfield stadium at a
Liverpool football match, and the sounds I heard there were simply majestic.
Thousands and thousands of people, mostly grown-up men were singing so loud
that the entire space was booming. It was beautiful. Even though they also
yelled a lot of curse words.)
I’d say there’s at least as
much art in loud cities as there was in the field I ended up in this morning,
which was very pretty. If you want to see it, I videotaped it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC981DW16x0&feature=youtu.be
I always like your videos :) Which audio book were you listening to?
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