Quito...It was a quick plane ride from Columbus to Houston -- especially sitting next to Nick. We got into some really good conversations and he is a nice dude. Leaving Columbus was difficult but I did not feel how sad and how much I am going to miss Caitlin (and her family), my family, and friends until today.
We got into Houston for our connecting flight to Quito and we had a couple hours to kill. Milling around bookstores, making fun of useless junk that airport vendors try to sell us, perusing the duty free store -- these were things we did to pass the time and to get to know each other a little bit. I was a little hungry and had an Auntie Anne's pretzel. Eating the pretzel, I realized how funny it was when my brother worked at King's Island at a place called The Pretzel Factory. It was either called that or something else -- I can not remember. Anyways, the point is that they both (both stores) seemed to have the same recipe. I bet that The Pretzel Factory stole the recipe from Auntie Anne's, just to throw out a little conspiracy theory there.
The plane ride from Houston to Quito was fairly good -- a little shaky touching down in Quito with the altitude and low-lying clouds. Every night, clouds roll in to Quito and the entire city is immersed in a great fog. Landing in Quito was quite terrifying, as we were not able to see the runway until we were about 50-100 ft. above it. It felt like we were about to land in a cloud.
On the plane ride, I began to read a book called The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World by the famous R. Murray Schafer. Schafer was practically the founder of The World Soundscape Project back in the late 60s at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada. He and his team of researchers were hugely responsible for the creation and development of acoustic ecology in its nascent stage. The book has been altogether mind blowing -- this is the first book in a while where it has jumped off the page at me, sort of changing my world instantly. Here is the abstract from the book's back cover, to give you an general idea of the topic matter:
"The soundscape -- a term coined by the author -- is our sonic environment, the ever-present array of noises with which we all live. Beginning with the primordial sounds of nature, we have experienced an ever-increasing complexity of our sonic surroundings. As civilization develops, new noises rise up and around us: from the creaking wheel, the clang of the blacksmith's hammer, and the distant chugging of steam trains to the "sound imperialism" of airports, city streets, and factories. The author contends that we now suffer from an over-abundance of acoustic information and proportionate diminishing of our ability to hear the nuances of subtleties of sound. Our task, he maintains, is to listen, analyze, and make distinctions.
As a society we have become more aware of the toxic wastes that can enter our bodies through the air we breathe and the water we drink. In fact, the pollution of our sonic environment is no less real. Schafer emphasizes the importance of discerning the sounds that enrich and feed us and using them to create healthier environments. To this end, he explains how to classify sounds, appreciating their beauty or ugliness, and provides exercise and "soundwalks" to help us become more discriminating and sensitive to the sounds around us. This book is a pioneering exploration of our acoustic environment, past and present, and an attempt to imagine what it might become in the future."
One of the central concerns that Schafer highlights even in his introduction is the warning of eventual universal deafness. He postulates that with the progression of man-made sound -- the over-abundance of acoustic information -- our ears will no longer be able to distinguish acoustic information, thus leaving us with limited or no hearing capabilities.
The final question that Schafer says that we need to answer will be "is the soundscape of the world an indeterminate composition over which we have no control, or are we its composers and performers, responsible for giving it form and beauty."
Our group has been touring Quito today and all of these thoughts are running through my mind. Ever since I have read just the first part (out of four) of Schafer's book, I am looking (hearing) at the world differently and sharpening my distinctions. Quito is a city of roughly 3.3 million people. The housing, building projects, commerce, transport, factories, -- everything is sprawled out on a giant scale. The sounds of the city are overwhelming -- traffic, car horns, car alarms, cell phones, sounds of machines, the constant roar of airplanes flying in and out of the port -- I couldn't help but feel the over-abundance of acoustic information that Schafer is talking about.
I recorded a lot of material today -- an indigenous woman from Otavalo singing folk songs, city sounds from the top of La Catedral (where this photo above was taken), sounds of our tour guide Rafael telling us information about Quito, sounds of our tour guide at La Compañia de Maria Jesus (an old Colonial church), sounds of an apparent blind woman singing and playing the accordion in the streets of Quito, sounds of the light wind and hum of the city from the hilltops, and finally the sound of a man-made waterfall right on the equator in the La Mitad del Mundo park.
Tonight, I think some of us from our group will go get Mexican food across the street from our hotel and then I will return and read some more of The Soundscape. I have already finished the first part, entitled First Soundscapes. I am interested to learn more the other parts are:
Part Two: The Post-Industrial Soundscape
Interlude: Music, the Soundscape and Changing Perceptions
Part Three: Analysis
Part Four: Toward Acoustic Design
I am not sure what we are doing tomorrow. I suppose it would behoove me to look at the guide that explicitly tells us what is going on but I am too tired at this point. If you are interested in seeing what our hotel looks like go here -- www.hotelquito.com
