Listen

In the last week as I was rearranging my bedroom to better accomodate new new working space and future furninture I plan to bring up here, I came across an old refill pad that’s mostly unused save for the first few pages (I had an awfully bad habit of doing that when travelling between home and uni between semesters, visits and term years). This particular one had the front cover missing and the writing on it caught my eye. After reading it through as probably a long since archived (circa 2011) and subsequently expired idea for an old website post, I feel it’s a thought worth showing the light of day, especially after studying sound and learning of the world becoming R. Murray Schafer’s idea of Soundscape hell (a saturated environment of artificial sounds drowning out the ornaments of ‘pure’ sounds within the environment heard), even though ironically my advice kind of goes against his (link here if you’re interested in what any of the last sentence meant).

So here is one of my musings of 2011, reshared for this week and typed exactly as was handwritten (graphical errors and all):

I was taught one life lesson in Acoustic Ecology. Don’t just filter out the “everday” sounds and listen to what you deem to be “important”, because some of the most interesting sounds are best heard when you let them speak. So go somewhere quiet, stick on your headphones, get out your recorder and listen carefully to the world around you, and record it if possible.

You’ll be amazed at the little things that present themselves to you. I feel this concept applies to life too. So take time, shut out the hustle and bustle of life. Sit down, relax and listen to your head and heart, instead of just what your mate says or your family tell you. Listen to the thoughts and face the issues that you pretend aren’t there or that you haven’t got the time for. You never know you might just solve it. And record it somewhere: Phone, Portable Recorder, Laptop, Diary, Note Pad – whatever. So in case you feel bogged down about stuff, you know you still can be and what you value and believe in. Whatever you believe, you’ve only got one life as the person you are on this planet and you should value every second of it you’ve got, so that at the end of it all you may have a few wrongs but you can still smile and know that you haven’t wasted the time you have and fulfilled your thoughts.

You know, it still stand by and believe in this musing to this day (proving that, although ery meta, it does work) and I with us all having a note taking device in our pockets or bags these days (unless it’s a Galaxy Note 7, in which case don’t keep it there!) high tech or low. So if in doubt, write/speak/record it out. You never know when it might come in handy again.

Happy Sunday everyone (or whatever the day future Mike or anyone else reads this).

(Present) Mike

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