Comforting Sounds

Why I cannot get enough of London's noisy soundscape.

I grew up in London. Its pulse, its sirens, its energy, it’s in my bones, it’s in the rhythm of my gait, it’s in the urgency of my temperament. At night, I long for a little of its thrum to gently lull me to sleep, and once arrived there no cityscape sound will ever wake me - a car was on fire in the street just outside my bedroom as a child once, my mother carried me to the safety of the back of the house whilst I slept on through the entire thing. If I’m travelling for an extended period I get homesick for its bustle. If it’s too quiet where I’m staying it freaks me out a little bit.

When I first started Still Space which began as meditation classes in central London, I would share a listening meditation where I would guide the class first to listen to the sounds in the space immediately around them - their own breath cycle, a fellow classmate shifting their position perhaps, the tick of the clock - and then to slowly expand their hearing-scape beyond the room to try to take in as many sounds as possible, extending their hearing as far as possible. After a few minutes I would ask them to gradually draw that soundscape back inwards to the room and eventually, to go within themselves and listen.