Notes on Silence, Sound and Invasions

There are contradictions poking my mind for time enough for me start jolting sentences down, which helps me with ordering these thoughts. I hesitated often, however, because ideas seem more enticing to me when they resemble intriguing book titles on a very dusty shelf, and often loose their charm - or their apparent well constructed reasoning - when spelled out on an article like this. However, recent conversations with field recordists Carmen Perez, Andy Martin, Enis Çakar and Bhaskar A. Rao, continued stirring up loose thoughts in me. Below is a patchwork of thoughts & memories.

Engine sounds, most notably the ones related to air and road traffic, are commonly pointed as a “nature field recordist’s worse enemy”. Topics and discussions amongst those of us who share that frustration, often involve the long travels, the long hikes, the long flights, the unfortunate constant disturbance - leading some of us really far from our homes and from the environments we have familiarity with, in part, searching after an absence. Discovering that absence is likely a (the?) victorious feat in the journey.

A sonorous utopia: if all living beings could benefit from more frequent extended moments without disturbances of that kind - equally meaning less emissions and pollution.

A couple of years ago I was sitting at a neighbour’s terrace and, while I was delighted listening to the frantic cute goldfinches singing on the tree just in front, my neighbour, with eyes and fingertips on the smartphone, yelled at them: SHUT THE F+++ UP! Then, I secretly wish that the goldfinches would shit all over the terrace in vengeance, but later it made me think of the disparity between what one wants to hear and the other doesn’t. Perhaps not very different from those people (typically guys, isn’t it?) who really love their car or bike engine to sound really loud, so much that it makes one’s heart jump in anxiety and contract with bitterness (that’s what happens to mine, at least).

One day I am recording howler monkeys in the Atlantic Forest in São Paulo, whose aggressive territorial vocalisations (that I was thrilled to put inside my recorder as a digital thing to be listened later with my author stamp on it) started to be drowned out by the sounds of planes in the relatively near Guarulhos airport. At an intersection point it was even difficult to distinguish which one was each. I felt it for my recording and then for the howler monkeys.

A few days earlier I was on board of a plane all the way from Madrid that was landing at the Guarulhos airport, so that I could record the Atlantic Forest.

Since September of this year (2024) I’ve set myself to record in my region at least once a week. I go to a chosen place after lunch, stay for some hours and often mount the rig for the night. One of those days I went through a path that had no signs of recent human activity - and I mean not a single mark on the ground or any rubbish, and a few kinds of spiky bush running wild and free. Happy, scratched and curious for the next day, I went off. 24 hours later I’m sitting in front of iZotope RX with a neighbour and friend that has been sharing these places with me. I’ve already copied the files on the SD card to my field recording hard drive and, as always, I am extremely excited to know what’s in there. On the spectrogram I see an engine coming close, stopping, lots of things happening, human speech, hits or shots - and that lasts for a very long time. Before I saw that spectrogram loading, I was almost shaking in excitement with the possibility of hearing the Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo Bubo) - an elusive endangered species that in three years here I only heard once.

Now, seeing an offending drawing on the screen, I was close to rolling my eyes backwards in the orbits, with a sigh. My friend, sitting to my left, is wearing headphones. I press ‘play’ and as the story of those people unfold on the soft pads around his ears, he is laughing... a lot. He recognized the neighbours and can’t stop laughing at what they say and how they say it and whatever it is they are doing. Some files later, we hear both for the first time foxes arguing, the mysterious black-crowned night heron, eventually the bubo bubo (!) and a few other very intriguing sounds we could not identify. It was a very sinister night in sounds. I was feeling slightly despondent about the very strange noisy night while doing archive work the next morning and got a text from him saying “I really liked hearing the neighbours on the recording - THAT was GREAT!”

The black vulture, a threatened species I should see more around here, needs a quiet space for nidification. I read that noise disturbance is one of the main threats to it.

Two Summers ago, I was sitting or perhaps laying down in one special spot by the lake. I was observing the sounds of winds coming to dance and going away until I laid my eyes on the restless invasive eucalyptus trees far away right on top of the hill. If not for them, that soundscape would have been much quieter and still, as the other vegetation like the oaks and some bushes are not as easily excited by the wind. “Nature”, ha…, I thought. How “natural” is this? There you go, “pure nature” recordings, my ***! (etc.)

I cut through a few fresh branches of eucalyptus tree and some pain inside me tells me that my knife is cutting through something that is alive.

Everyone likes to listen to the nightingale.

Today, as I type, some construction work is happening in an adjacent street in this tiny quiet village. I hear a truck back and forth and it has been going for hours. It annoys me but it’s a needed service.

Somewhere very far from me in the globe, probably someone is recording something really special, whether that person is local or foreign. Everyday when I wake up my attention goes outside and I count the spotless starlings, I take a mental note of what they are singing. I smile if I hear the hoopoes too and jump a little if the golden oriole sings. One night between Summer and Fall, I woke up with the flash and pounding tear of thunder, illuminating the bedroom through the ceiling window. A few seconds after it calmed down, a grey heron passed just above and called loudly. I hear it going away and in that short interval the little owl called next. I’m rejoicing and energised with this, even though it might be 4 in the morning, but I know an old lady here who is deeply afraid of thunderstorms and thus not having the best time.

I tend to prefer “nature” field recordings without planes, without engines, without dogs barking. The “value” of their absence is delimited only by our own cultural constraints, in which I am inserted, even though I’m working to turn more to all manifestations of life, be it my neighbours singing up in the street, be it hearing their memories of an old soundscape that is gone, be the anti-social Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium aegyptium) on the ceiling window of my little home studio, the midwife toads by the lake or the fresh wild boar tracks. It could be the fungi popping up after it rains and the streams awake and running where, with the heat and draught, it was silence before and to silence it will return when the rains stop once again. And while I record this truly ephemeral lively stream, maybe a neighbour passes in his diesel truck, glances at my gear, waves his hand guaranteed we’ll talk about birds next time we see each other.