I left the window open last night because I have a slight cold and was awoken by a very loud dawn chorus. I think the birds must have been sitting on the guttering and in the trees that line the road. It was one of those “I can’t sleep-am still tired- don’t mind though” moments.
I recalled an anthropologist who was one of the first to bring Amazonian Indians to Europe to argue their case, took them to his own house and he had to play a recording for them at night because his city home was ‘too quiet’, they were used to the sounds of the forest. A noisy jumble of sounds. And I realised that so many natural sounds have vanished from our lives to be replaced by those of our own creation that we no longer have the same psyches.
I stand by the sea and listen to the waves, I hear the birds in the morning or their wings flutter as they fly away from my passing, I hear the insects in the garden, I walk the dogs by a dirty but sprightly river and in the fields I am almost always alone. I do not have the same world as other people. No TV stations, even my mobile phone is on buzz and not many people even have the number.
The natural world of sounds has been left behind by our civilisation and we are suffering everyday because of it.