September 16, 2019
“Your body contains an autonomic mechanism that syncs you up with strong, external rhythms, pulses or beats, a phenomenon known as entrainment. Actually we entrain to the rhythms around us all the time, although we are not aware of it most of the time. The relationship between the external rhythms and your inner rhythms or pulses is inseparable. In fact, our internal rhythms will speed up or slow down to match a stronger external rhythm.”
I moved apartments 3 months ago. I like my new apartment maybe 59.9% of the time. But I digress. My former apartment was about 2 plots away from a mosque. I was playing around with sounds and as I was working, I noticed my jaw was stiff as usual. Again, I digress.
We respond to our environment in many ways and it is easy to not notice how blaring horns, generators, roadside speakers, fingers banging against a keyboard, prayer chants, beach waves, someone’s laugh or sobs, music, etc., affect our physical bodies.
I moved apartments 3 months ago and I started to grind my teeth. I have sores in my inner mouth because I bite myself till I bleed. I suffered headaches and could not sleep and abused painkillers (thank God for Sumatriptan). On days when I pitied my liver, I found solace in Coke + whiskey or Coke + vodka. The sounds in my new environment were driving me crazy. I could not work, not think, not sleep and I was taking it out of my mouth. I woke up every morning to the call to prayer. I would stay up all night working and talking to man and try to catch some sleep around 4 am. But the 1st call to prayer is 6am. And I am a light sleeper. This has really reset my sleeping patterns. It doesn’t matter if I go to bed at 5.55am. I now wake up at 6 whether or not I hear the call.
I’m going to put up 3 videos with photographs and layers of sounds that I have played around with. There is always rhythm with sound, good or bad. I have taken this component and tried to translate it to a visual experience. The idea is if you watch the video without sound, you know what I am feeling and vice versa when you just hear without watching. Listen closely. What can you hear?
I first heard about this theory in the movie ‘My Name Is Khan.’ It was the last Indian movie I watched because I cannot be sobbing like my own son just died in real life. Rizwan Khan in a romantic (but honest effort) pointed out to his wife, Mandira that her laughter was the specific sound that increased his heart rate. It was a curious thing for me even then. I needed to know whether this formula applied to the bad stuff. Well, I know the answer for myself now. I live in a building with 6 apartments. I stay on the topmost floor. The view is nice, depending on where you are. The living room is big. I have a whole pantry that is the same size as the kitchen. My sisters and I have our rooms and bathrooms and can navigate the whole space without seeing each other for days. But it isn’t a serviced building. There are 7 generators downstairs. And one of my windows is directly above it and the way the room is designed, I can’t move my bed to the other window. The 1st few nights, I cried. In the following weeks, I was quick to pack a bag to go spend the night anywhere else. Once the electricity goes out, my heart plummets. I always try to sleep when there is electricity but the way my body is wired makes me stay up all night. So at night when there is no electricity, whether my own generator is on or not, my head is in my hands. Even as I type this, gbogbo gen ti wa online. I looked for solutions, trust me. My best solution is the $250 Bose noise-masking sleep buds as long as I live here. Somebody’s generator recently got bad. It has this racking/pulling/angry sound and this is how my head feels. My sister and I concluded that whosoever owns it works from home because immediately electricity is out regardless of the time, bam. Now imagine this generator, plus 4 or 5. It is murder. This is how my head feels every single time this racket starts. For the rest of my life, wherever I choose to live, noise would be non-negotiable. What is the one sound you can’t stand and have you noticed ways your body reacts to it?
I grew up in an estate. I was in boarding school and then university was in the small town of Ife. I think it was when I started driving noise became a part of my life. Then I moved. Even more noise. Did I talk about the church near my place that has services 4 times a week including all day on Thursdays? Okay. No. Enter white noise. I found white noise in law school. I was too wired to sleep. I would count down till 6am to get up and be out by 7. I went to Oniru beach with my Ifelaw classmates a few weeks after resumption and I realised I was relaxed. I recorded the sounds of the waves and played it at night. I slept. My little cousin who is actually big now reminded me of white noise when I complained that I wasn’t sleeping. I downloaded a few apps, and a few albums and put together what worked for me. It is a combination of all kinds of movements of all kinds of bodies of water.
How do I describe what white noise does for me? Have you ever gotten a head massage? I get one every 2 months when my loctician comes around. It feels like the beginning of a head massage, followed by a screwdriver at the ends of my jaw as if the rows of my teeth had hinges. My breathing becomes lighter and my eyes even though closed, feels like staring at a hypnotic swirl (those black and white seemingly unending spiral.) Even when I don’t need to sleep, like during a panic attack and I need to centre myself or when I have been driving for long, I ‘let it rain’ in the car. It is amazing.
By the way there are different ‘colors of noise.’ It was fascinating to read up on how this shapes sleep technology - something as complex as pink noise being better for sleep because of lower frequencies and balance but white noise being better for me because it is good for masking all kinds of sound. An easy example is a waterfall being white noise but a calm flowing riverbed is pink noise. They are both water movements but at different frequencies and octaves. I have layered both white and pink noise in this video. And of course, tried to translate it visually.
I’m fascinated by the psychology of sound - how a song can make you cry, or someone’s voice can make your heart race faster, or how the bark of a strange dog can fill your stomach with fear. Our ears and emotions have such a strong bond. I record the things I hear from time to time and I try to pair them with certain visual elements to produce an emotional reaction. I’m hoping this interest will lead me down the path of sound design much later. I traveled ‘home’ to escape. I have 3 identified stressors and noise is one of them. It affects me so bad my body feels it in many different places. But home? There is no noise. My brain has registered this ‘home’ with certain sounds and these sounds bring about a feeling of peace. This is a typical night sky in Osi-Ekiti and I played around with not less than 10 different elements (and my father’s voice). It is so peaceful you hear the silence. So when other elements are introduced, even if it is feet on gravel or crickets in the dead of the night, you’d hear it clearly.
Amazing drum work by Falk Schrauwen and Ejaspapa.
October 8, 2019