Ever since last night, I haven’t been feeling well at all. I’ve had a sore throat and an achy body. Today at school, all I wanted to do was climb back into
bed, so that’s the first thing I did when I got home from class. I decided to do my deep listening project from
my mom’s bed, since that’s where I’d be spending my day. I thought it’d be interesting to gain a
deeper familiarity with my everyday surroundings. I set my phone alarm, opened up a blank
document on my laptop and just listened.
A few sounds were extremely frequent.
The strong winds made our siding creak.
Since there is a window just to my left, the creaking was moderately
loud. Soon after beginning, the
kitchen clock struck once, signaling that is was now 2:30pm. The television was shut off, but I heard random creaks from it. My laptop began
humming. I had always heard its faint humming before, but listening to it in
silence reminded me of the winds that you would hear in a movie when there was
a tornado coming (very Wizard of Oz). There
was also the rumbling sound and slight vibration from cars and trucks going
down Lincoln Highway, just off of my road.
I could hear my own breathing and the breathing (and snoring) of my dog,
Gabby, who was lying at my feet. My
pillow rustled as I moved my neck to try and relieve some of my aches and
pains. I also heard the scraping of me
scratching my forehead, a smoothing sound from me rubbing my brow, and the hard
swallowing due to my sore throat. My
laptop stopped humming, and in its place, was the sound of my stomach gurgling
from a mixture of yogurt and a free Starbucks drink. I got a gift card in the mail. Hallelujah!
Throughout the entire ten minutes I also, of course, heard myself
typing. Finally, my phone alarm went
off, alerting me that my ten minutes of deep listening had finished. There were a couple conclusions I came to at
the end of this exercise. First off, I
make a lot of sounds with my body.
Secondly, this may sound silly, but there’s no need for anyone to fear
creaks in the night, because they happen just as frequently during the day. Lastly, before starting this exercise, I
figured it would consist of ten minutes of me shutting myself off from
technology and just listening to my environment. Well, as it turns out, much of my environment
consists of technology. I even used
technology to keep track of time and record the sounds I encountered. Usually when I sit in the quiet, it is to
read, think or pray, so it was new for me to sit and try to actively
listen for what was going on outside of my head, and I really enjoyed it.
Afterwards, I told my dog to look up and got this awesome picture of her.
