Sound & Noise
What is the difference between a sound and a noise?
It is interesting that noise is a modern concept. In nature, where is there “noise”? It is the sound of the tree falling - not its noise. It is the sound of children playing, not the noise of their playing.
If we go a little deeper, all the sounds of nature carry information, loads of it. The chirping of the birds tell us that the rain has ended. The barking of the dogs tells us that someone is around. Sounds we listen to and for.
Noise on the other hand penetrates our space, and speaks of something that is out-of-bounds, often violent. The noise of a crashing vase, the noise of the neighbour’s car starting, the noise of two people arguing. Noises hit our adrenals, putting us in a flight or fight mode.
The background of nature is often silence, although forests are filled with cacophonies of sound. It is generally a healthy forest that manifests that array of sound.
It is a background upon which you can learn to hear and listen. To receive the sounds and place them in the natural narrative. It is like a conversation with the living environment that surround us.
However, in the urban - could I say human, and thus non-natural - environments, the background consists of lots of noise. So much so that we can become so habituated to it that we crave it and become afraid of the quiet. We frequent places like bars and restaurants in which we can be surrounded by the familiar background hubbub of voices, in malls and stores there there will be piped music.
Most of what we hear in the cities are sounds that we are irrelevant to us, and we ignore. There are others that we might even reject - or walk away from. But the default response is “throw-away”. In other words, there is more noise on the line(s) in the city, than useful or nourishing sounds.
It is like a post-office that receives mostly junk mail, or like the spam email that constitutes that majority of our email - you just don’t see most of it. In other words, most of what is being received has to be filtered out! Just like the sounds of the city.
In nature, however, we can sit and open our ears, both our outer and inner, and listen. It requires a certain silence and inner peace, and slowly she will awaken and you will become more and more aware of the sounds and movements all around.
So we invite you to spend some time in nature and just listen, to yourself, to your thoughts and open up your heart and begin accept the sounds around you. You will be amazed as to the cacophony of sound that surrounds you. It is as if you are in a symphony hall, where the lullabies and love-songs that are sung in soft and hesitant melodies vie with the harsher sounds and the wind crashing through the trees.