“I tried to discover, in the rumour of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.”
Gustave Flaubert
I went out with Bob for a walk a while ago. We’re lucky, we have fields right across from the house that we can walk in for ages. I walked to my favourite spot, raised and where I can feel the sun on my face, and from where I can see right across the fields. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and listened. Only this time, the sounds I was unconsciously expecting to hear weren’t there.
I lived in London for 23 years before I managed to escape to, well just outside London actually. I’m outside the M25 though, and that’s like being on Mars to a Londoner, which I’m not but my wife is. I’m a Northerner who grew up in the foothills of the Pennines in Lancashire. I crave green and solitude and silence.
Actually, at first, I escaped to Oxfordshire, which is probably one of the most beautiful counties in England; all green rolling hills and stone cottages. The village I lived in was fifty miles from London, had 5 houses and a pub and felt like it was five hundred miles away from anywhere. There were fields right outside the door there too; with horses. The house was a 17th Century thatch-roof stone cottage and honestly, not much had changed in this hamlet since.
In the summer, the cottage was cool and we could open the front and back doors at the same time to create a low “tunnel” through the house to the back garden, where there was a wishing well and an apple orchard. In this configuration, the house would air-condition itself with cool breezes. The internal stone walls were about two feet thick, so in winter, the house also kept itself warm.
“C’mon Creasy, you’re shittin’ me!”
No, not really. It was picture perfect and could easily have been lifted from the pages of The Hobbit. Just to give this some credence, Tolkien based the Shire and Hobbiton, on the landscapes and villages of Oxfordshire and Worcestershire where he grew up.
Anyway, as I mentioned, my wife was a Londoner (I don’t think she can claim that status anymore), and whilst she gave it her best shot in Oxfordshire, we eventually had to move back closer to London because she was going nutso living out in the sticks. My only condition was that it had to be outside the M25 (mental barrier), and have a good-sized garden that the kids could have a kick-about in. Actually, I later banned all “kicking-about” because as the boys got bigger, and could kick the ball with greater and greater force, our hedges started to look like they had been at Trafalgar.
Our new place was just the ticket, big enough with a good-sized garden and about 5 miles outside the M25. Tick. Where do we sign? Sorted. On top of the base requirements, it had the additional benefit of having the large aforementioned fields in front of it, which then backed onto woods, which in turn backed onto a golf course, through which there ran a public pathway. Ok, I could do this. This would do nicely. Not as idyllic as where we were and probably not going to run into Gandalf anytime soon, but good enough. Nice. Suburban.
We even lived near the “Old Town”, an area, which as far as I can tell, serves no useful purpose whatsoever. There are more millinery, bridal, art, fancy kitchen and antique shops than you can shake a stick at. Oh, and restaurants. Lots of restaurants…..and gastro pubs. Not one butcher or baker or candlestick maker, but there is a clock shop.
There was one more thing that our new home had that the place in Oxfordshire didn’t: white noise. If you live or have ever lived in a city, you will know what I mean. No matter what time of the day or night, there is always background noise. Ever turning tyres on tarmac roads, engine whine, pub-chatter, sirens, the metal on metal sound of the tube and overground, approaching aircraft and pipping horns, all amalgamating and blending like cake dough, to create an ever-present hum that either your ears learn to tune out, or you leave behind and go live in the Shire. Our new home had this sound. Not as bad as London, but there. Mainly, it originates from the motorway a couple of miles away. This road connects our town to London and each morning, and every night, the traffic from our town amplifies the noise as rush-hour kicks in, and lines of cars head toward or return from London, carrying their bleary-eyed occupants.
On this day in late March 2020 though, standing in a field with my eyes closed and my face pointed toward the setting sun, that sound had stopped. The only sounds I could hear were the sounds of the field. The odd bird, the barley rustling or Bob snuffling about near the hedgerow looking for rabbits. All else was still. All else was silent. It was rush-hour.
The sense of relief was palpable and I felt giddy and calmed at the same time. The last time I had felt this silence was the last time I stood on a beach at my sister’s house in Scotland on a still day, yet here I was, twenty-five miles from London, and it was so quiet I could have been on the moon. Everywhere was like this. The noise had stopped everywhere!
My first thought was
“I hope it stays like this for always”
But right then, as soon as I’d had the thought, I knew it wouldn’t stay like this. This strange time we were living in, that had thrown families together or torn them apart was temporary, and it would end. We would make sure it did, and when it did, so too the silence. That realisation hit me, and for a moment I was sad. Just for a moment mind, because it was silent now, so I would cherish this time, despite the quiet turmoil going on everywhere.
My wife had to work from home. My 11-year-old daughter started virtual school. She walked out of proper school on Friday and started virtual school on Monday, and it was like she had been doing it all her life. The school had performed miracles to get the online teaching environment in place, and the students trained, in time.
My son came home from University for Easter two weeks early. It’s his final year and he won’t go back now. No end of year parties, tearful goodbyes or final emotional pub-crawls around Lancaster. He’s been studying Fine Art, and his End of Year show will be online now instead of his first real show. His graduation has been pushed back to December instead of the Summer, and his clothes and belongings are still up in his now empty digs. We’ll have to go up, empty his studio and collect everything when the noise starts.
I have phoned, texted, FaceTimed, Teamed, WhatsApped or emailed EVERYONE in my family. Many times! Sometimes for hours on end. This has been a time of re-connection for me, and I suspect for all of them too, both with me and with each other. It is so easy to lose that connection with the racing pace of our society where time, time, time is the elusive commodity. Will I lose that connection again when the quiet stops? I hope not. I have come to realise just how vital and important that connection is to me, and what an amazing family I am part of.
For a short time, I learned how to use Twitter. I still think it is the single worst application ever designed. It’s counter-intuitive and irritating, with conventions that make no sense whatsoever, and yet it has been a connection with “old-life”. Twitter is full of noise. It is quintessentially a meme for the modern world, capturing all the chaos, all the crazies, all the genius, the humour and all the now, now, now of our kind. I can only be there for a short while before I start feeling the need to rant at someone, so I usually stop then, but not always.
The more I use it, the worse a person I become. The more I use it the more I am re-engaged with the competition of ideas that gets in the way of individual reflection. Good, bad, genius, crazy or just plain dumb ideas. Noise. It’s deafening, and whilst ordinarily, I would just tune it out like I do the white noise, in this quiet, temporary time, I can’t. Now, because I know this time will be fleeting, it feels like an immense and extraordinary intrusion, unwelcome and unbidden. So, I’ve stopped using Twitter. I don’t want to be distracted from this time. I want to bathe in isolation and listen.
“Listen to what Creasy?”
I feel like there is an important harmonic in the world. It’s probably always been there but it hasn’t been able to get through all our static. If you stand still now though, in a field or a forest or on a quiet shore, close your eyes and tune in, I bet you can hear it. It’s just a whisper, but I bet you can feel it too. Surely it’s worth a try? Maybe the more of us listening, the louder it will be. Maybe our listening amplifies the harmonic until we are all in tune with it?
I think there is a simple but important message hidden there.
“stop. listen.”
I think this harmonic lives inside all of us. It’s internal, not external and of course, HAS always been there. The barely audible voice saying “no, not that”. The almost imperceptible vibration, deep down, that starts when we round a corner in the road and the unexpected majesty of nature takes our breath away, and the voice says “yes, this”. Then there are the moments when the vibration is not a tremor but a rumble that shakes us at our very core and the voice, not a whisper now, but a harmonic choir of loss or love or pain or joy that cannot be ignored, and that must be shared, lest it overwhelms us.
This time we are in could have been such a moment, but it won’t be. It’s already over. It passed and we missed it. We all felt it though, let’s not pretend we didn’t.
When we learned carbon emissions around the world had tumbled
“yes, this”.
When the dirt in the city air fell like a curtain and we could see them clearly
“yes, this”.
When we realised we hadn’t filled the car for 6 weeks
“yes. this”
When we collectively sent our light to the one’s who had lost the most, and when all they could hear was “please? not this”, even then
“yes, this”
When the trees stopped falling and the earth stopped screaming, and a quiet that few of us has ever known, descended on the world
“yes, this”
When our days were spent in the presence and proximity of our husbands, wives and children instead of the slow death of our desks or the factory floor
“yes, this”
“Yes, This”
“YES THIS”
It may not seem like it now, but we will yearn for this time again, but like the voice, we will push that yearning down, down and down until we can hardly feel it any more, but feel it we will. An insistent, irritating adjunct to “no. not this”. The practical will continue to dominate the ideal, realism the surreal or the abstract idea of being. But here’s the thing, we’ve seen it now. We saw it all stop impossibly quickly. Cars didn’t drive, trains didn’t run, aeroplanes didn’t fly and, for a short while, people were nicer to each other. We can’t unsee that any more than we can uninvent the light bulb or the telephone.
Now things are being “relaxed” and the noise has started again and it’s just so disappointing. “Relaxed”, so why does it feel like the opposite? Why does it feel like the static is back? Why do I feel “old-life” rushing back in like an urgent, unrelenting flood tide?
We did a good job of “stop”, not such a good job of “listen”. We will do a worse job of “remember”. We will need to be reminded again and again and again. I’d like to think though that having experienced it once, we will recognise it when it returns, as an old friend rediscovered after years apart, and we will listen properly and collectively hear “in the rumour of forests and waves”
“yes, this”
