Peysakh Shalumov
I am so used to walking with my headphones on blasting music. So used to walking quickly all the time because there is always somewhere I had to run too. So taking an hour of my day to do nothing but walk and listen to my environment is relatively new for me. Ironically, I hit a roadblock immediately to start off. I am not used to silence, and when it comes, I usually focus on my thoughts rather than my surroundings. Immediately I was thinking of my problems, my plans, and ideas. All these things swimming in my head had made me lose the experience of the assignment.
In order to obtain the full experience, I fought off any urges to think of anything other than the sounds that are part of the walk. This way my experience was not altered and I could enjoy the assignment. It was around 11am, so for the first ten minutes, I heard several different bird calls but did not pay them any mind. Some were loud and harsh, while others were constant and weak. Then I heard a particular bird noise, that reminded me of the same exact noise my parrot used to make before we gave him away. I then focused my attention at all bird calls and tried to find a bird for each call. The keynotes were mostly the cars driving by. I lived near a big street called Ocean Parkway where hundreds of cars pass by every minute. In a twenty minute span, I counted seven car honks. Another sound signal that attracted me was the loud noises of the kids playing in the area. The laughter boomed through the blocks and when they talked it seemed to stand out from the adults. This might be because of my interest in working with kids, so that might be completely biased.
There seemed to be no pattern in the sound scheme of my walk. It was constantly changing. There was a lot of people, so I constantly overheard conversation, but nothing particular stood out. It was rather enjoyable, the idea of slowing everything down and just walking and listening was entertaining.
