Ears Naked / Sound Stage

I looked down to my walking shoes, with dust still from the last walks, and felt the physical absence of the recording gear. Today, for some reason I couldn’t decipher completely, I didn’t want to bring it. A few days ago I was immensely lucky to see the lapwings arriving at their usual wintering location, so I went their way today.

Entering the area after the road, I stopped for a few minutes to observe the cows. They have one ear tagged and a cowbell on the front of their neck. To me, some of them are new around here; I can’t remember seeing cows with this light grey colour. There are baby cows, always near their mother - or so I presume. They appear to be very calm, as it is the soundscape. In a given time, some of those will disappear from the landscape and become butchered body parts somewhere else. But the soundscape will remain very much the same, at least to the casual passenger; if there is no one listening.

Ahead, memories of an early summer weekend in the end of April, thousands and thousands of tiny colourful flowers, amongst which I laid down, nearly intoxicated by the fragrance, a piece of rainbow drawn in the sky, scored by the expressive Thekla's lark (Galerida theklae) song. Now it’s a scented and humid dark green, with many tall wild carrot flowers standing dry since late July.

To observe the changes in the landscape and its sounds throughout the seasons and climatic impositions has been nurturing in me a sense of - what I think is - love. I am still conjuring that in my mind when I see a car ahead indicating someone must be by the shore, maybe a fisherman, maybe a man with his fishing rod. It upsets me slightly, for one time before an unknown man starkly invaded my territory and followed me on the road and I don’t know when the memory of this horrible experience will fade enough so it doesn’t come to my mind each time I come here and notice the presence of a man. 

I decide to turn right instead of continuing ahead and raising my knees high through the bended long reed-grasses, I search for voices with my hearing and wonder if the sound of my presence has been noticed. A rock invited me to sit and so I did. I’m very quiet, except for the upper button of my jacket ticking really fast like a metronome, producing a small metal-polyester sound. With my fingers I bend the corner of the fabric to recoil the button in, taking this tickle away from the wind. 

Across the dirt road in front of me I hear Iberian magpies and, once in a while, corn buntings. 

I look at the midwife toad pond, remember them, still in wonder of their unbothered staccato calls, and remember the boar I heard drinking water, strolling at the edges, surprising me immensely of how loud it was - that breathing was so loud and it made it seem incautious.

Very far, in a piece of land which gets submerged by the mid-winter, sheep are small light dots but their bleating reaches me with immense clarity. I hear the younger ones, I hear the dog and see it running around and, occasionally, I also hear the man who takes care of the flock. Intermittently, to my right ear, one of the cows moos in the distance, and I am in the middle of the soundscape, like a stone on a stone, but pretending not to exist. 

I think of the differences of being here to just be versus when I carry my gear and listen through it. Listening through the gear, I create a stage, looking for arising contextual problems and also for beauty. I make decisions of the configuration I want to capture. This toad here. That wind there. Closer. Not now. There are no pure nature recordings. There are no pure nature recordings. 

From here, I can’t look down to see the lake shore where I intended to go but it doesn’t take long for me to hear two voices: one of a man and another whose timber I can’t make sense of. I’m curious as to how very muffled they sound, even though I estimate it is no more than 30 meters the distance that separates us. It’s so muffled, certainly below 500 Hz. Their trajectory is clear on the dirt road as their voices move closer to the car and soon enough I hear the car’s door opening. I wait impatiently for another sound like that and then the closing. I wonder if I should pretend to be a cautious animal, but I am one, although I no longer feel threatened because I knew of their presence much earlier than they would know of mine and that gives me power, even though my knife stayed at home. My decision is taken: I’m going to the shore. I make myself noisy through the reed-grasses but don’t look back. 

And finally I sit on the dirt and examine the edge of the water, brown-green, dusty, bright algae powdered, with dark red plants emanating, balancing in tune with the very soft shlop shlop sound of this slimy edge, uninviting. I roam the line between the rocky dusty ground I sit on and the dancing slime-algea-water to look for a clear entry. Where did I go in, when I came here to bathe in the Spring and early Summer? It needs rain. I hear back in my head the memories of the first sound reflections on the surrounding oak trees of my great excitement sounds and giggles when I dived in the cold water in a past May, playing, talking with them, and I’m urging to carve new dreamy memories when it’s the season again. In a way, I already want that season to happen, so overloaded with joy, body permeated with lively scents, sounds, textures, dry warm, cold wet.

I hear a smack and an air sucking sound right in front of me. It’s familiar from a recent observation on the other side: a catfish. Now my senses are back at the present as I scan a bit deeper, looking for clues: an sinuous movement of a mysterious protuberance, bubbles or a particular animosity amidst the dancing plants; my ears are like stretched expecting another smack. But they are hit by a grey heron call  instead: my torso hops back in surprise and I gaze at the sky after the sonorous prehistoric call and I see those large wings. It’s a big heron, now leaving my horizon, after having certainly shaken up all the creatures in the trees where it came from.

A few very small fuchsia flowers are standing erupting from the dirt. They are called “grown love” in Portuguese (Portucala pilosa). No other name could have been more accurate for this moment. I uncovered a little white and shiny stone from the dirt with my fingers, now also covered with dirt. It doesn’t repulse me and I don’t feel the need to brush it out. How can a small stone look so beautiful? Why this colour? I know nothing about it and lament it, as if I am at fault. I hold it in my left pocket, making a promise of knowing more.

I decided it was time to go. 

On the way back I noticed the car is no longer there and I’m very surprised I haven’t heard it. Why was that? Where was I?

A bright little egret to my left flies, above the midwife toad pond. And only back at home I remember I didn’t see or hear any lapwings, forming a compromise of returning soon.