Sound Walk

On an afternoon on my way to pick up negatives for 2 rolls of film that I shot, I decided to do this soundwalk. On the train, I put away my headphones and phone and began to listen. The first few minutes were extremely disorienting, after all of these years listening to music while traveling I had forgotten how loud trains were. The sounds of the train in motion and the sounds of people having conversations became a bit overwhelming. It was a constant stream of pounding noises coming from the tracks and dialogue without any context; which eventually began to annoy me because I couldn’t tune anything out like I usually could with music. It felt like I was in a superhero movie where the hero first discovers that he has super hearing and is completely overwhelmed by his surroundings. Anything and everything made sound. Even though it was in the afternoon and everyone should be at work or at school, New York was still so busy.

 After I had picked up my negatives, I sat down on a bench in the train station. I heard echoes coming from the tunnels of the tracks and suddenly I was hit by a huge wave of nostalgia. I remembered being a child the last time I heard these echoes. Back when I did not have an MP3 player or a phone to block out the world. The train ride home was the longest ride ever. I was taking in so much of the environment around me and thoughts were sparking at the instant of every new sound that reached my ears. This only contributed to the intense suspense that I had because the only thing I could focus on was wanting to see how my pictures turned out. Even though I gave up my phone and music for this trip, I was still in a world of my own.