One of the most valuable things about sound and listening walks is that they offer participants the space to slow down. This may seem like a trivial matter, but only until we realize how much we are subject to the dictates of the clock, its digital variants, in our everyday lives. How many times a day do we check the clock just to make sure we have everything we need to do? It is one of the many invisible forms of stress that have a fundamental impact on how we feel in the long run, but also on what we are able to perceive, how intensely, to what depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How many times do I find myself walking down the street at a brisk pace, even though I have a moment to spare and there is not the slightest reason to do so \u2013 but I spend so much time under the pressure of time that something from that condensing rush penetrates even the rhythm of my walking, breathing, speaking, accelerating and unsettling me from within. Then I have to force myself to slow down, take a deep breath, stop. And as soon as I do so, miracles begin to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was like I woke up to a completely different reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gallery owner jerks open the old, boarded-up window, pigeons stomp on the tin roof below, applauding their own departure. I look at the water lilies in pots, the wet black soil, the shiny drops on the waxy stems and leaves, from whose centers pale veins extend like perfect images of quaking aspen, poppy-red five-petaled flowers of the ornamental cinquefoil, <\/em>The peeling gutter, the peeling white paint, the lobelia with their lilac-comforting blue, narrow sword-shaped leaves. A lime-green sedge climbs up my calf. I notice how its soft, pulsating body, along the length of which several symmetrical whitish stripes run, tenses and wriggles grotesquely as it squirms. From the blooming wisteria that climbs the steel pergola above the yard, every now and then a thick drop of rainwater falls and splatters against the glass top of the table, against my thigh, against the plastic back of the chair, into a puddle on the rain-darkened asphalt right at my feet, in which the turquoise of the sky is reflected, the wisteria leaves illuminated by the sun, quivering, breathtakingly beautiful.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The chirping of field crickets, rhythmic like a sleeper's breath or machine drums. The clatter of a startled deer's hooves, muffled by the lush meadow flora, the barking of another in a nearby remise. The fluttering threads of spider webs and tiny flies gilded by the setting sun, as if glowing from within, with their own spark. The green of the meadow annealed with the nude of blooming honeysuckle and dogwood, dotted with atolls of daisies, pastel splashes of cockscombs and bells, flowers as delicate as Sibyl Merian's butterfly drawings. The bat's squeak of some kind of timid rodent, a voice on the very edge of believability. The distant croaking of a tree frog in a pond under the hill. With my movement, I swirl the seeds of poplars, spinning and sailing through the air like deep-sea plankton. A birch grove with a couple of grazing sheep that pay me no attention. The birch leaves rustle like a heart before its first love. The scent of nettles in the bend of the road. My son runs to meet me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The stifled silence into which the song thrush brazenly jams \u2013 phrase, pause, phrase, each time different, each time unique. The gloom of an approaching storm, the thick air, the calm surface of a pond, a footpath for some reason carved by heavy forestry machinery. Thunder, still without rain, rumbles between sandstone rocks, resonates through the earth like secret thoughts, the muffled gurgling of a shallow stream completes the sensitive musical counterpoint. I stand in that still air full of almost erotic tension, momentarily free from anxiety, drifting through space without a score, without preamble.<\/em> Those who move quickly pass countless points of attachment that flash, croak, and ripen all around us. Such a point may be <\/strong>the ringing song of the wood crane, the numbing sweet scent of the grove, the cool self-glow of fireflies on a steamy summer night, a lavender flower of the eagle hidden in the tall grass, the grass itself, waist-high, shoulder-high, overgrowing passersby, rustling into dreams of the end of civilization, the prairie under the windows. Such a point can be the calligraphy of sun reflections on the pavement, dancing on the leaves of trees bent over the river, the coral-pink twilight after a fresh early evening shower, the dust stirred up by a shy animal, a weasel, a marten, a squirrel, a child. They often do not have and do not need names. But they are here with us. Magnificent in their inconspicuousness. Inconspicuous in their magnificence. Small flashes that compose a touching storm of earthly beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we slow down in a group, the effect of slowing down is multiplied, amplified. We extend to each other the hand of slowing down, which itself is the right hand of flourishing in closeness \u2013 of deepened intimacy with the world, with the earth, with the subtlety and intensity of its living color changes, sound changes, and fragrances. That is why I like sound walks in a group. We say to each other: go and listen. But slowly, unhurriedly, casually. But softly, above all softly. We allow each other to let the world speak to us in fiery densities and concreteness: like this rustle, this splash, this playful, broken, syncopated song. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the most valuable things about sound and listening walks is that they offer participants the space to slow down. This may seem like a trivial matter, but only until we realize how much we are subject to the dictates of the clock, its digital variants, in our everyday lives. How many times a day do we just check the clock to make sure we have everything we need to do? It is one of the many invisible\u2026 Continue reading Lud\u011bk \u010cert\u00edk: Go and listen<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,70],"class_list":["post-11723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-texty","tag-ludek-certik","tag-naslouchani","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11723"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11806,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11723\/revisions\/11806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/potulnauniverzita.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It's simple \u2013 the slower we go, the more we capture, perceive, hear around us, the more fully we experience. Slowing down is the basis of attention \u2013 something that, for example, American short story writer Lucia Berlin or Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase have a lot to say about, both willing to linger long and undisturbed, to observe, to listen, to bear witness. About pain. About raptures. About the bitter and silky awareness of transience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What exactly we will hear can never be reliably predicted. But one thing is certain: we will hear it together. Together we will be touched by it. Together we will surrender to it. Together we will experience the joy of how richly the world around us hums, lives with sound. And through this shared experience we may even come to a deeper realization that all listening is, in its essence, always co-listening \u2013 an activity that brings the listeners into a more intimate relationship \u2013 into together<\/em> \u2013 with other sounding and listening living creatures, but also with the earth itself, the horizon of all cruelty and tenderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n