Vancouver Soundwalks
Reclaiming our city one soundbite at the time
Reclaiming our city one soundbite at the time
Photo by Alex Bunardzic
Our daily routine living is based on knowing what not to pay attention to. We’re constantly faced with a barrage of signals, especially when living in the midst of highly urbanized areas. While we keep paying close attention to many visual signals and cues, sounds gets delegated to either alerting us to some imminent danger (such as a car approaching rapidly), or to reminding us about some trivial events, such as the ding sound signaling the arrival of the elevator.
Vancouver soundwalks offer an interesting learning/growing experience by organizing silent walks around neighbourhood streets, in and around buildings. The way these walks typically works is by having a leader walk the group of interested citizens around the predetermined area, while all the participants remain silent. The idea is to try and pay attention to sounds — big sounds, small sounds, and any inbetween sounds.
For that to work, we found that the best approach is to try to filter out visual signals. In other words, try not to pay attention to the sights that may excite the mind and take our attention away from the sounds. Secondly, it helps if we manage to keep our minds from daydreaming as we’re following the group in silence. Once we succeed in getting into that ‘zone’, interesting things begin to emerge.
This is really a silent walking meditation. The mind slowly opens up, until it gets blown away by the otherwise familiar sounds. Another important thing to keep in mind is to try and filter out the meaning of the sounds. Typically, we interpret sounds around us in a utilitarian fashion; we dismiss familiar sounds (familiarity breeds contempt) and only remain open to examining unusual sounds.
The silent soundwalk places all that rote behaviour and thinking on its head. You suddenly realize what a rich and variegated world is all around us. And most importantly, you realize that by walking around and paying close attention to the sounds, we manage to reclaim the space that rightly belongs to us, the citizens.
Here are two recordings I made while doing the silent walk meditation with our group. The first one was recorded on April 27, 2014, while we were walking around the waterfront area in downtown Vancouver:
https://archive.org/details/SoundwalkApril272014
The second one was recorded one week later, on May 4, 2014, around Vancouver Olympic Village area. This one was led by Ross Birdwise and embellished by the improvised interplay by two musicians — Carol Sawyer (voice) and Joe Rzemieniak (trumpet):
https://archive.org/details/SoundwalkMay4
Enjoy!