When should we listen more?

I have created audio work for World Listening Day for a few years. They have mostly been based on the environmental issues that are most pressing today such as global warming, bird flu, and noise pollution.

I had a piece ready to go which is a requiem piece with harmonised Geiger counter drones, a self created choir and sound recordings of an abandoned Ukrainian village but for some reason this doesn’t feel the right time to release it.

In the past, World Listening has encouraged creators to think about specific topics such as 2021’s The Unquiet Earth, which resulted in my release of unQUIET or 2019’s Listening With, which became the impetus for Nest.

On a personal level, these past weeks have been chaotic, stressful and at times very sad. Not really conducive to creating art. On a world level, there is war, famine, floods, storms, dying birds in their thousands, super heatwaves, intolerance and greed. So, I suppose I know where my original idea for a requiem piece came from.

However, this morning, I decided to go into my garden and do some therapeutic digging. A grey cover and stillness hung over my garden. Soft rain began to fall and I took shelter, just standing and listening.

I have to say that I am no field recordist. I am an audio reimaginer of field recordings, using processing and editing to make something new out of audio. Unusually for me, I felt the need to record the moment.

Yellowbeak the Blackbird, is idling away the time in his perch. The crow family are making a retreat to their lofty nest in the Sycamore tree and in the distance, the world meanders by – planes, babies crying and women in muffled conversation.

Three minutes.

Three minutes where I stood and listened to the rain, took in the calmness and forgot the chaos.