Walking to the Beat

I walk to work. Not all the way but I do park at least one and a half kilometres from the office and walk in. I was using this time to listen to the music I don’t usually get to listen to and improve my overall fitness. Since I have started a fairly regular routine at the gym my fitness has improved greatly and I cover the distance in less and less time every day.

The music helps as I find I start walking to the beat and so it keeps me moving along. As it has grown colder in the last few weeks I have found it too difficult to try and untangle my headphones and flick between songs with my gloves on. So in the last few weeks I have travelled without music and instead listened to the traffic and sounds of the street as I walk.

Using the senses to enrich our writing is very important and it’s something I have discussed before. But I have rediscovered the importance of hearing for myself again and so I wanted to share.

We hear so much without really thinking about it. On my usual trip there are several places I have to stop and wait for the traffic lights to cross the road as I am travelling in the same direction as the traffic. But with my hearing unobscured I can hear when there is a lull in the traffic and can then check before crossing the road. Probably not the best example to share, but it shows how hearing can make a difference.

All noises are important and can give a real sense of place. One morning last week I could hear the click, click, click of a cigarette lighter. Someone standing in doorway to get out of the wind while they tried to light up. With the sound I could picture the small wheels turning and the flint trying to catch. Then I started to think that one sound can take you away somewhere.

It took me to a party in my youth when we all seemed to smoke. The guys used to fiddle with my lighter so when I went to use it there would be this amazing (and scary) huge flame. Then I would have to track down the one guy I knew would fix it and that quiet, intimate time laughing over the silliness of it while he tried again to show me how I could fix it myself.

It reminds me how many stories are out there. Just that one sound started so much moving around my head that I will try now to focus more. Of course there are the cars and trucks zooming past, all making different noises, some with music so loud I don’t need my own music.

There are the people you pass on the street. The snippets of conversations, phone calls, clicking of heals, thuds of a runner. And then of an evening when I walk back to the car, in the dark, there is a whole new range of noises.

It also reminds me to make sure I use sound in my writing. What sounds did you hear today? Maybe tomorrow you could head out, sit somewhere noisy and listen to the world. Then imagine where it might take you.

Happy Scribbling.