June Reflections
I’m a little bit obsessed with an app on my phone that identifies birdsong. I’ve had it for a while now, and what I notice is that I ebb & flow with using it... but this month I am never many moments away from pressing the icon.
The birds are making themselves known, I’m not sure if having the app has led me to notice the birds more or if I noticed them first and then found the identifying tool.
Either way there is a process that I’m involved in now. I can’t ignore what I am hearing. My awareness is more attuned to as the process evolves. I find myself tuning into the sound, finding my own way to filter out the peripheral distractions. Inevitably this involves some sort of pause, if only to just to look up momentarily and orientate to the source.
No doubt my breath becomes steady as I do this but I’m not aware of that.
Then comes the moment when I connect to the sound and internally locate it either as 'familiar' or 'new & Unknown'. The familiar follows a pattern I’ve heard before - maybe in another location & at another time, but there is a resonance and I search my mind for the words to categorise what my body already remembers. Some days this is enough - to settle to what is known, to stay with the fleeting familiar.
Other days I’m more cognitively driven to categorise. In those moments it’s as if to identify the creator of the sound will help me understand it more. I’m not sure that a classification alone brings understanding, but it potentially moves the bird closer to 'known' if I can just hold on to the sound & the name.
I guess the whole process feels useful to me right now. I want to know more. The more I notice the sound the more I am invested in paying attention to the individuality of each bird. I stop just generalising - I move from ‘the birds woke me up’ and become more able to hear the Uniqueness of each voice (‘the blackbird woke this day up'). For me there is a direct translation of the process to the voices and the categorisations in my world right now. Whether the voice heard is on a local, regional or global scale we all can have a tendency to generalise.
Adults often categorise and stop seeking to understand. Whilst I don’t suggest an app to 'hear' & locate the individual - I do believe there is something beneficial in my process... A momentary pause of locating the familiarity or decipher the new, a fleeting decision between whether the familiarity is comfortable or when there is a drive to know more. A movement of voice from other to known.
There benefit in the pause before assumption for us all.
- Katy B