Tag: sound

Inside Out

I’m playing fast and loose with the Daily Prompt today: although I’m only on day 7 of my blog-quest, perhaps a near week of work has led to the well of inspiration running dry.  But, just to be original I’m going to write about being on the inside, imagining the outside.

 

For a teacher, I’m an insubordinate old shrew.  I spend most of my day telling students what to do and expecting them to follow my orders.  A memorable dialogue from today went like this:

HIM: Miss, can I go to the toilet?

ME:  No.

HIM:  But I need to go!

ME:  Well, DON’T need to go!

Do I think I am King Canute, ordering back the tide?  No, I just know my students very well and the odds of this student felling nature call just as they are about to start an exam were highly unlikely.  And I’m bossy.

 

So I’m all for subversion outside of the classroom: a stickler for rules if I’m setting them, but following them?  Me, not so much.  For instance, I find the suggestion of someone telling me to relax utterly ridiculous.  How am I supposed to relax?  The mere implication that you need to tell me to do so infers that I am not relaxed, and probably with good reason!  Likewise, I find the process of meditating incredibly difficult: as soon as the voice intones that famous phrase ‘ connect with your breath, feel it’s natural rise and fall’, I find myself going through an artificial construct of breathing, forcing the air in and out of my lungs like a hand operated bellow, or, worse still, trying so hard to make my breathing natural that I ……eventually …stop ……breathing …altogether.  By this point, any thoughts of connectnig with breath, a genuinely natural occurence when I’m not thinking about it, are out of the window, and I sit up, scratch my head and open a book instead.

So, relaxation on command is not for me.  Particularly arduous are trips to the masseuse; as soon as I hear ambient music in a candle-lit chamber I know that it is an exercise in futility.  I spend the next 30 minutes urging myself to enjoy this indulgence but inevitably spend it worrying if I left the hob on or if the masseuse actually fancies me, because that last stroke was a little too friendly.  I often come out with more tension than I went in with, and have to feign gratitude at the end, barely making eye contact.

 

What a horrible person.  But how can I relax when you tell me to?

 

Fortunately I have found the antidote, and that is to seek out he opposite of relaxation for any therapeutic treatments.  I have had acupuncture on and off for years, with varying degrees of success.  Needless to say, the mesmeric, ‘ you will relax you will relax you will relax’ style does nothing for me, but my current practicioners is a minor miracle.  The sessions take place in an open fronted shop in Manchester’s Arndale Centre, which is a huge shopping mall, if you’ve never been there.  The Acupuncturists is between the sliding doors onto the High Street and a Milk Shake Bar.  Sessions take place in small cubicles with no noise insulation and everyone who works there is always shouting.  Always.  The noise of the traffic of gobby Mancunian shoppers (ususally kids screaming, laughter, someone having an argument on the phone) competes with the Techno music from next door and the shouting of the acupuncturists.  Did I mention that?  Because the cubicles aren’t insulated, you can hear the outline of everyone else’s ailments in consultation (one patient was requesting treatment to recover from a skipping injury, I kid you not).  The final harmony line is the clinic’s own choice of music, pumped in through a stereo; they tend to favour Mandarin versions of popular tunes, such as ‘Baby’ by Justin Beiber or ‘Poker Face’ by Lady Gaga. To complete the full sensory experience, I lay under what may or may not be someone’s beach towel for half an hour with pins stuck in my head.

 

This, dear reader, produces the most relaxing half hour of my week – more often than not I fall into a blissful half sleep, and wake, dry mouthed and groggy only when my doctor is applying the cups.  I walk out as if on air.  I dance home.  Then I lie down again and fall to slumber.  The only time I relax is when the odds are against me; when fate and geography and other people and beachtowels conspire against what normal people would want in a fulfilling de-stress. But I think in order to relax, I need to feel close to life; in my cubicle I am protected yet so near to a lot of competing activity, and it’s here that I find the most satisfying repose.

 

But that’s just a theory.  Like I said, I’m an insubordinate old shrew.

 

An elegant ‘now’ monkey

Noises Off Experiment:  Completed!

This week has been pushing back the cuticle of noise and distraction to reveal some lovely healthy brand spanking new thoughts and sources of creativity underneath.  Like pushing back a cuticle, it has involved some commitment; not because I have particularly missed noise and distraction, but because, if you have read the rest of my blog posts, you will know that I have been preoccupied with my thoughts to the detriment of thinking about my body and ‘the moment’.

And this has been mighty frustrating at times …

Overall, I think I’ve made some headway. I’m proud to say that I don’t crave an episode of Mad Men or even John Humphreys in the morning and although  I’m a long way from ‘cured’ (which is completely the wrong phrase to use) I feel  more fulfilled and  excited by the prospect of living a quieter life.

So what have I found out from this week?

I can be more productive if I take the time to switch off external noise as far as possible and engage a little.  And my choice of words is deliberate – there is a big difference between swtiching off and blocking out, which would have required some effort on my part and would have meant that I was still having to account and repair for outside distraction.  Nope, best to cut it off at the source, which means no telly, radio or music.  Rip off the plaster!

My mind, as it turns out is not a lonely wanderer, but an amateur rockclimber.  It has all the kit, but by golly is it nervy! It clings to precipices of dark thoughts, refusing to budge for hours, dangling on the same phrase, riffing on the idea of ‘you can’t do this you can’t do this you can’t do this’, rather than loosely swinging from moment to moment like an elegant ‘now’ monkey.  How I long to be an elegant ‘now’ monkey!

But who knows? Awareness is half the battle and being forced to listen to my thoughts incessantly has made me take them less seriously than before. I feel that if I keep turning off that which I am not consciously listening to, I may be able to live more easily in the present.  A week is a starting point, and I will maintain an audio fast as a practice, maybe two days of the seven to begin with…. and take it from there.

But if you are interested in living mindfully I strongly recommend taking a break from outside noise  to foster your creativity and mental balance. One day we all might And move from the cliff-face of distraction to the treetops of fulfillment!

Stef

Enjoy the Silence

Noises Off Experiment:  Day 5

Hello!  If you’ve just found me, you may need to read the last couple of posts to work out what I’m doing.  If you like intrigue and are short of time, let’s just say I’m audio-fasting (thanks Rhi x)

Living in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, I have been blessed with an incredible view of the surrounding hills. The sky high rent affords me a sky high view of the brink of the shoulder of the Pennines, as it mooches off towards Scotland.  The weather at the moment is hormonal, swinging from sunny spells to fierce rain and the sky is a real Rorschach most of the time.  I like to think that the clouds are not the source of the problem, but its victim, pinioned to the sky, forced to obey whatever the weather throws at them (charming naivety or idiocy: you decide).  Whatever, I’m a cloud champion and today they have been majestic.  Great merchant ships of grey, looming into my window vision like the Deathstar, unencumbered by the literal sturm und drang which surrounds them.  They were immense and well ….cloud, in myriad forms right the way  to the horizon.  I tried some mental word association to see what would happen.  It went like this:

Kansas

Dorothy

Ruby Slippers

New Shoes

Aldo

I evidently need some mind opening alongside my audio fasting!  Still, taking in the clouds made me think about the term luxury and how misleading my perception of it is.  I think of luxury as a sky high apartment and a flatscreen, for example.  But at least the apartment gives me the opportunity to take in this spectacular view.  Granted, I could take in the clouds from somewhere less indulgent, but can I walk before I run?  The view is the thing, not the rest of what living here affords.

In fact, I have re-evaluated what I consider pleasurable and luxurious this week and have realised pretty quickly that a night in front of the box hasn’t made the shortlist. Television hasn’t  entered the mind-debate much for me this week, as it hasn’t been something that I have consciously missed and this is surprising.  Once through the door, the TV would habitually be on, for company, for edification (no, that isn’t true), for entertainment, for whatever reason, but rarely was it genuinely watched.  It was soundscape; all other reasons are pure subterfuge.  If I do sit down to watch something, I’m shuffling within minutes, checking my phone or my laptop or a magazine.  So my angst about losing the background sound was pre-emptive; there is no sense of deprivation, no withdrawal, just a happy change.  I realise now that silence is not an absence, a challenge, a trial; its a bona fide luxury, a true one, along with a few others, such as a chair, a window and clouds …

In the Co-Op with Bobby Womack

Noises Off: Day 2 of living without extraneous sound (or audio-fast as a wise and brilliant friend described it)

The morning silence is the best bit, I find.  It gives me the space to let out all the random fragments of song that have collected over the night (this morning: Native New Yorker) without weaving them in with all the other thoughts that have accumulated over the course of the day, the Breakfast news, alarm sounds and 6 Music.  To be honest, it’s rather like singing flat out in a sparsely populated concert hall and therefore quite awkward.  I hear the song, I try to offer it lodging, but ultimately it just peters out of its own accord.

Subsequently, all songs sound strange and ridiculous to me. In the Co-Op, Bobby Womack and Damon Albarn seem a mightily dramatic accompaniment to buying vinegar and tampons.  If I genuinely stop and listen, it is absurd.

 

Likewise, the man opposite me on the train plugged in and closed his eyes, as if dozing off at the start of a long flight.  Which in a way he is. If we’re unhappy with our predicament, music is a means of escape or at least a distancing and if we’re feeling good, it simply highlights our mood.  But for me, music is a conduit – how much do I really hear on the way to the mindset  where I want to be?  Not much, it would appear, as I’m beginning to appreciate the other soundtrack a lot more; the whine of the train engine, the clink the wheels make over parts of the track which seem less secure, this reminds me where I am.  Which is not too bad a place, in fact, certainly no worse than in the Co-Op with Bobby Womack.