Intro
Listening can be many things. It is an exchange of vibrational energy in the form of waves. It is a means for auditory perception and cognition. It is a relational endeavor between a listener and a sound-source. In this episode, “INTRO,” you will be guided through a deep-listening exercise. The soundscape of a rainy day in Manhattan is explored through the concepts of listening, sound, and the Anthropocene.
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[A New York City soundscape fades into your foreground. The spring rain patters against your umbrella. Cars, some northbound others soundbound, splash puddles across the warm asphalt. People mutter quiet conversations as they hurry along the sidewalk. Weather, technology, and people all resonate together.]
[00:34] It's April 2023. And it's raining in Manhattan.
[Sirens wail in the distance as rain continues to patter, cars continue to splash, and people continue to mutter.]
[01:04] You're standing on the corner of Park Avenue and East 95th Street. What do you hear?
[The sirens also continue at a consistent volume as if the vehicles have reached their destination. The alarm glissandos—its pitch rising and falling, rising and falling—and begins to blend with the rainy soundscape of the city. Several car horns resound with abrupt, “honks!”]
[01:53] You might notice the sound of the rain against your umbrella.
[Amidst the multi-textured soundscape, the sound of the rain against your umbrella fades into your foreground.]
[02:21] The sounds of cars along the street.
[The sounds of rain begin to decrescendo, as the sounds of cars alongs the street now fade into your foreground.]
[02:52] The muffled conversations of passersby.
[The sounds of the rain and cars are still discernible, but the quieted mumblings of people around you begin to enter your foreground.]
[3:21] While each of these sounds represents a specific thing or event or environment. They all share something in common. The fact that they're all vibrational energy—energy that travels from a source through the medium of air to your ears;
[The soundscape slowly pans from your left ear to your right ear, to finally balance equally between both ears (as if the soundscape has traveled through the medium of air to your ears).]
where it reverberates against your eardrums, causing the tiny hair like cells within your inner ear to transduce soundwaves into electric signals…
[Tinkly, electronic sounds oscillate between your ears.]
…and then send those signals to your brain.
[The tinkly sounds raise in pitch as they travel along your central nervous system. They fade into silence as the rainy soundscape once again enters your foreground.]
[4:13] Listening is, therefore, a process. An exchange of energy. A means for perception and cognition. And yet, it's hard to define listening in those universal terms. Humans are not the only beings who listen. And the act of listening differs based on context and individual disposition. Put another way, your listening is always filtered through your own specific physiology, experience and understanding.
[A car’s tires grind against wet asphalt. Indiscernible voices and music thrum in the background. Raindrops thump against umbrella and ground alike. But is this how everyone “hears” these sounds or just you?]
[5:11] You can think of this as a relational endeavor. Between you as a listener and the world around you. And although listening can connect you to the rain against your umbrella,
[Raindrops thud against your umbrella.]
the cars along the street,
[The slimy, wet peel of rubber against the street sounds out.]
and the people walking nearby.
[A diversity of accents and phrases blend together in collective, jumbled dialogue.]
Listening also reminds you that you are not completely separate from them. Your heartbeat.
[The muted “thump, thump” of a steady heartbeat begins.]
Your flow of blood.
[Bubbly undulations of flowing liquid commence.]
Your breathing.
[The raspy intake of oxygen into your lungs, followed by your swift exhalation of CO2, joins the bodily-sonic-texture of your heartbeat and flowing blood.]
Your life is intimately part of that world, enmeshed in a reciprocal relationship with people, transportation, weather, animals, atmosphere, water.
[The sounds of people chatting, cars passing, and rainfall; together with your heartbeat, blood flow, and respiration; alongside the howl of coyotes, yelps of rats, drone of wind, crash of ocean waves, together begin to blend as a dense and multi-layered soundscape. It becomes difficult to discern one sound from another.]
[6:07] All of these enmeshed sounds make up our sonic worlds, and those worlds are changing as we confront a planetary scale force. Climate change has emerged as a leading crisis of our time and requires us to reimagine and reconsider seemingly everything—from our individual climate impacts to our collective ecological relationships. The division between human and nature has now become blurred.
[The dense soundscape crescendos, and then abruptly cuts to silence. The last sound present is the beating of your heart. Music begins to play. A simple electronic melody, alongside a resonant percussive groove elicits a feeling of earnest contemplation.]
[6:49] Many have embraced the term “Anthropocene” to define our current moment in time when humanity has altered the planet to such an extent that the traces of our influence are now present within the Earth's strata (i.e. nuclear radiation, toxic emissions, microplastics). But not all humans have contributed equally to such violence against the planet, and not all resulting changes are evenly felt. Certain global systems like colonization and capitalism produce cascades of impact, which disproportionately affect those who have contributed least to climate change. The Anthropocene, as a concept, fails to capture these inequities. And while it is useful to help mark our current moment in time, sometimes a word alone just doesn't suffice.
[The music continues to play as additional melodic phrases enter the texture.]
[7:44] It is often difficult to talk about things at this scale. Sometimes there is a lack of vocabulary. Sometimes things are just so entangled and complex. And sometimes things at this scale will simply exist outside of our direct, everyday experience. They are not singular objects that you can manipulate at your will. You can't reach out and touch the Anthropocene. But perhaps you can listen to it. Listen to our changing worlds: to the ways that sound can overlap and cross boundaries and labels; to blend and resonate as an interwoven network of vibrations. Maybe sound and listening can aid when words fail and help create something for you, even if it's just a small shift in perspective.
[The music slowly fades to silence, and is replaced by a New York City soundscape. The spring rain patters against your umbrella. Cars, some northbound others soundbound, splash puddles across the warm asphalt. People mutter quiet conversations as they hurry along the sidewalk. Weather, technology, and people all resonate together.]
[9:05] What do you hear? Do you still hear rain in Manhattan? Or has your listening changed? Are these sounds somehow more connected than before? Connected to one another? And you to them? To answer these questions will require an exchange of energy, a means for perception, a relational endeavor. So...
[The New York City soundscape crescendos, and then abruptly cuts to silence. All the voices and sounds from Season One of The Sonocene begin to overlap and blend together in a collective gesture.]
[9:43] Listen.
Listen to my voice.
To spoken words and ambient sounds.
[All the sounds from season one begin to fade into your foreground.]
Together they tell the story about people and place; about plants and animals; about the ecological relationships within New York City during a time of rapid change. And the way they all resonate as an interwoven network of vibrations.
Welcome to The Sonocene—ecological stories told through sound.
[The New York City soundscape assumes your foreground one last time. It slowly fades to silence.]
