Silence and Soundscapes

Five years later, reflecting on renewed relationships.

Part One

After a night of bad sleep, I was frazzled all day. By six in the evening, unable to do anything else, I lay down and reached for my phone, hoping a podcast I’d noted might help kill time; or even better, lull me to sleep. I wasn’t planning on concentrating, let alone going through three different episodes of three different shows! I was surprised by my own engagement. Besides, it was relaxing; the perfect trick for the sleep-deprived brain.

This modality - tuning into a specific soundscape while minimizing other sensorial input - is relatively new for me. Doubtful readers might ask, “But don’t you listen to music?” To those, here is my counter, “When was the last time you listened to an entire music album with complete focus? Or the last time you followed along a song’s lyrics while listening to the tunes? And when was the last time you dedicated a whole hour to music videos?

I don’t mean to expound the connection between music and the mind. There is plenty of research and numerous articles. This is more of a personal reflection because over the last two decades, I had gradually forgotten those cherished teenage habits. Or rather, I’d let it slip through my life’s cracks.

Becoming an adult means trading one set of habits with another, as contexts and preferences change. In my case, there was more to it. Moving to a Western metropolis at a young age meant the acoustics I had been used to until then - Kathmandu in the 1990s - were drastically replaced by alien American acoustics, ranging from metallic roars of underground trains to Vermont’s isolating winter hush. Those early-aught years, as the Internet expanded and smartphones hit the market, a different kind of noise crept in - visual noise, textual noise - and our brains filled with captions and comments. YouTube and social media also multiplied available choices for entertainment. So I forgot about the simple joy of sitting in front of a television and watching the weekly Top Ten. We now categorize those activities as passive but at least television was manageable, despite the monotony. We even got bored, which, turns out, is good for our creativity and mental health in general.

Before I delve more into my renewed relationship with the auditory realm - recommitting to music videos being the first step - I’ll briefly summarize the three podcasts I mentioned earlier. This list might reflect my ongoing interests and the reader can even accept this as a recommendation. But it is, by any measure, a random list. As I wrote earlier, I simply reached for my phone on a sleep-deprived evening; although it’s worth emphasizing that I had made a point to note these titles:

Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

I’ve been following Semafor for over a year now. Their daily email briefings contain a list of the top ten global headlines, each accompanied by a small blurb. This takes about ten minutes, enabling me to start the day feeling informed but not overwhelmed. Additional features, such as Curio (which highlights a piece of cultural news) and sporadic highlights from the London Substack and the Chinese Internet pepper my consciousness with intriguing tidbits I might never have encountered. Mixed Signals feature conversations with news makers from the media. I was interested in the podcast with the journalist Ezra Klein because his name had been popping up frequently in recent months. Klein recently co-wrote a book titled Abundance. How could a left-leaning American spin the latest political developments in a positive light? Rather than feeling doomed or avoiding the news, I’ve been listening to contemporary figures who might offer alternate perspectives. In Part Two, I’ll write more about my ongoing quest to discipline my media consumption.

Iris Murdoch on the Sublime & the Beautiful (A lecture from 1959)

Somebody must have mentioned this in an article or another podcast. I don’t remember how I got the reference weeks, if not months, ago. That’s the beauty of note-taking - a small commitment in the present can open up entire future possibilities. In the lecture, Murdoch deconstructs various philosophical traditions and their impact on literary ideas. I won’t get into the details here but I will make an attempt to paraphrase one of her key propositions: there were two important philosophical trends in the late 1950s: existentialism (Sartre being a typical example) and linguistic empiricism (the tradition of Wittgenstein). The lecture was surely insightful, although these dense theses are constantly on the verge of slipping off my cognitive cliff. Another aspect that has stayed with me is Murdoch’s accent - So sharp and mid-century!

The Behenian Broadcast

“The Behenian fixed stars are a selection of fifteen stars considered especially useful for magical applications in the medieval astrology of Europe and the Arab world.” Those who know me personally won’t be surprised by this third entry. And for those who don’t know me, I hope I can interest you to explore the cosmos and the constellations a bit. In their first episode, astrologer Gary Caton and his guest introduced the fixed star Regulus, which appears in the constellation of Leo, and I learned that Regulus is associated with the stone garnet. In this episode, they featured Procyon, the eighth brightest star. The name is related to the Greek word for dog because Procyon is associated with protection. One can learn about this fixed start and meditate on its myth in order to call on the cosmos to protect you. “Before seeking love, or wealth or success,” Gary says, “maybe seeking protection is a good idea.”

Part Two

Although podcasts had been available for many years before the pandemic, they penetrated the mainstream during the lock-down days. My exploration also began then. Think of those early months. What new activities did you attempt in order to fill those hours? For me, it began with VH1, the music video channel on television, when I was struck by a Billie Eilish tune. That led me to a whole Billie Eilish album on YouTube, which in turn led me to lyric videos. It felt like Venus herself had descended from the sky and waved a magic wand. I was instantly reconstituted.

Really, how had I forgotten about this simple joy? Why had I let it slip through my life’s cracks?

This post is actually inspired by those questions. For many months, I have been contemplating soundscapes and how we can intentionally choose acoustics based on our preferences. Soundscape as refuge. Soundscape as a separate sensorial realm. Soundscape as an alternate source of information. Soundscape as a counterpoint to the digital realm which still prioritizes the visual-textual modality.

Deep in my bones I know I wouldn’t have been able to readjust my habits had I not embraced the quiet constraints of those lock-down days. The pandemic was testing. And I want to acknowledge those who dealt directly with death or other difficulties. Five years have passed and our minds and bodies are still processing. I’m remembering the internal shifts, traces that have remained…

The deep peace from those first two springs are now a psychic reference point, a trembling portal I chose to enter and then emerged in a state of total surrender and grace. I remember the stillness, as if the earth itself had temporarily ceased to move. Or rather, as if the earth was moving through a new section of the universe and we could properly sense that the light and air were now composed of novel particles.

Perhaps I was able to enter the lock down and surrender to it on a cellular level because I had already instigated a couple of changes in my lifestyle long before Covid.

• After signing a book contract in early 2017, I began decreasing my alcohol consumption. Because I mainly write in the morning, I wanted to wake up fresh. It’s amazing how, once alcohol becomes a dispensable, one’s social circles gradually begin to shift. When the lock down was announced, I was ready to go completely sober. Eight years later, I maintain that this is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

• At some point in 2017, I also decided to opt out of Facebook. I still haven’t deleted my account but in 2017, I made a vow to completely stop posting and stop scrolling. (I have posted a few times since then, but I still don’t scroll. Last year, I locked my account.)

As I drafted my memoir that year, subtle insights rose from the recesses of my subconscious. For example, how enmeshed I had been in social media for an entire decade. The enmeshment was fueled by alcohol and immaturity: when I first opened a Facebook account in 2007, I was a young professional living and partying in New York City. Folks from my generation now sigh about being the initial lab rats of Silicon Valley as they tweaked algorithms! A few years later, Instagram was launched (in 2010) and then acquired by Meta (in 2012). I moved back to Nepal in 2013 and began to network and participate in Kathmandu’s vibrant cultural scene. I opened my account at the end of 2014 (and the beginning of my six-week India trip). By the time the earthquakes hit Nepal in the spring of 2015, I was hooked. The earthquakes might even have sped up young Nepalis’ adoption of not only Instagram, but various other online platforms. If the thrill of a Western lifestyle fueled my Facebook use, with Instagram, it was the thrill of rediscovering Nepal and its natural and cultural resources.

These days, we might be more cautious and the Internet itself has morphed. But the challenge is still there - how do we navigate this powerful source of information and entertainment while leading balanced lives?

In 2017, as I drafted my memoir, I was thinking of all this. Thinking of where I’d been, what kind of images I was projecting online, who I’d related with, the quality and health of those relationships, and their impacts on my own mental health, which led to the Facebook decision.

Quitting entrenched habits can be difficult, if not impossible. One can’t pinpoint when self-awareness creeps in and takes hold of one’s consciousness, and how, eventually, one gets compelled to take action. I was still using Instagram in 2018 and 2019 (I still do) and had even begun exploring Twitter, although that platform never quite jelled with my instincts and my ways of being. When the Delta strain exploded in the Indian subcontinent, I took that as a random sign to quit Twitter. There are leaps in logic here but during that first year of the pandemic - as I was embracing the external stillness and understanding my own internal sensorial needs - I felt an urgent need to streamline my media consumption and revise my relationship to the smartphone. Perhaps I was beginning to realize that my neuro-sensorial makeup might be a tad different than most people’s!

There was another reason. While locked down, I also realized that I had not been paying attention to the world as carefully as I should have been. I browsed through headlines, switched between portals, read random articles, had half-hearted conversations, all of which turned me into that quintessential liberal millennial who was superficially aware of What Was Going On but hadn’t closely followed the complexity of historical geopolitical events and emerging cultural trends. When one relies on social media or friends for news, one can get even more confused, anxious and at a loss. I needed to take control.

So I had been sober for a while already and no longer posted and browsed on Facebook. I decided to stick to Instagram but with strict rules and boundaries. Instead of trying to engage on Twitter with strangers, I began engaging more with plants and pets. During the first two years of the pandemic, I even quit the dating apps and remained completely celibate. I have since signed up to specific newsletters that I commit to reading regularly and I watch one television news program every day. Every day, I also devote a good chunk of time to music.

This kind of overhaul - regarding what one is consuming through one’s senses, mainly as they relate to images and soundbites - has been tantamount to switching to a healthy, nutritious diet after living on junk food for years.

We can be strategic with soundscapes; maybe it’s even necessary in noisy South Asia, where personal boundaries and alternative needs are still misunderstood. Kathmandu traffic police even installed a fine for drivers honking recklessly. My journey began amid the pandemic’s silence, which led to a decision to discipline my media consumption. As my days got quieter and my body relaxed, I became more intimate with my internal radar, which in turn allowed me to create more space for joy. I still continue some habits I picked during the pandemic - evenings under the open sky instead of staring at a screen; mornings filled with bird-songs. And if I wake up in the dead of night, I step into the balcony to meet the deep quiet. When the earth is totally dark and absolutely quiet, I can almost sense myself merging with the silence.