WALKING
I believe walking to be an integral part of foundation of being an environmental field recordist. Normally we walk to ‘find’. I propose walking to experience and walking to know and understand. Every morning, I take a ‘think walk’. These walks bring me so much information that I wouldn’t have been shown unless I walked.
Thoughts from a recent walk I took:
I walk to think. Many of us walk to clear our minds, to escape something and to jump out of a thought. I walk to jump into thought. My mind becomes static and alive. I write this as I walk. The autumn hues of gold yellows and fading greens stimulate every sense. The animacy of the more than human feed my knowledge. I take my headphones off because I don’t know if that blackbird, I just heard sing is real or a factor of the ambient music I have playing interwinding my inner and outer ear experiences, I let go of my questions and breathe to let in the words of the world.
I walk to breathe
I walk to think
I walk to be
I walk to understand
I walk to listen
I walk to know
I walk to explore
I walk to collaborate
I walk to walk
I propose walking to be a key factor in learning this methodology, from writing the methodology itself to experiencing the methodology in real time. Two legs carrying us to sound. I use walking as a way of collaborating with more-then-human beings. As I walk, I talk through my tongue, feeling and thought. I regularly speak to the silver birch trees along my street. Frequently I find myself apologising to them. Seeing their roots forcing their way through the pavement. Seeing their branches being cut as to not obstruct the road. As I walk I think about this more. Who are we accommodating for?
As I walk I find my mind drifting towards the more-then-human. My thought seems only to be on them. I sit here in my house looking out of the window for thought. I live on the second floor of my building, eye to eye with the crown of a sliver birch tree. As I do with walking, I look to them for thought. My mind seems to be open when I walk. I propose walking to be a intrinsic part of what I have rephrased as ‘deep experiencing’. Something that I will elaborate more on in my listening blog post.
To explore others feeling of walking I look to Robert Mcfarlane. An avid walker and experiencer. Through McFarlanes books I learn his love of walking. He walks to learn and understand, like me. I apply his interest of walking to my methodology.
A snippet of a conversation that the gradian had with McFarlane about his book ‘Is a river alive? :
Q: How does that co-authorship with a river work?
A: It is glaringly obvious to me that all thought is intersubjective. This book could not have been written by sitting still. It could not have been written from the archive. A great deal of it was written in its first form either on rivers, by the banks of rivers, or within earshot of rivers; having spent days following rivers, being buried within rivers, spat out by rivers. I find it bizarre that copyright law rejects the notion of nature or a natural entity as possessing the capacity to be recognised as a “moral author” (to use the term of art from copyright law).
What to take from this conversation? McFarlane talks about co-authorship with the more-than-human, like how I talk about collaboration. He hinders at the fact that he writes with the rivers. To apply this to my methodology I walk to collaborate in thinking with the more-than-human. These ‘think walks’, are not just my ideas and my understandings. These thoughts are a collaboration with the more-than-human thoughts. Together we think. Everything I have written so far has come from snippets of ideas I had written down in my notes page on my phone when going on walks, thoughts thought together through walking, that is why I believe walking to be such an intrinsic part of exploring a methodology into collaborating with more-than-humans sounds. We walk to think together, and to think together we collaborate.
Information and understandings from Four of McFarlane’s books:
McFarlane is a professor of literature and environmental humanities but is best known for his critically acclaimed books writing about people, places, nature, landscape and the more-than-human world.
Mountains of the mind is one of a trilogy of books that McFralane has published. Along with The wild places and The old ways, McFarlane explores walking as a tool of understanding. He writes about stories that can only be known through walking on paths. Here is the authors notes from McFarlanes book mountains of the mind:
I like how McFarlane says how his thinking in writing this book has only been possible through walking. Much like how I apply walking to the methodology – to walk is to know.
Something that I really admire about McFarlanes book is a river alive? Is the fact that he has put a glossary at the back, something that I have done with my previous essays. It allows the book to be understandable and accessible for all. A lot of the words present in his glossary are words that I frequently use and more I hadn’t discovered yet. I will reflect on his glossary when writing my methodology.
I have also just started reading Frederic Gros book on the philosophy of walking:
This book although quite centred on historical facts, has been another important point of reference. This book explores different ways of walking-with the more-than-human. Gros connects thinking to walking and explores the history of walkers who centralise walking in there practice as a main point of knowing.
Some quotes I liked from the book:
“Others think we are wondering aimlessly, when really it’s a matter of following the idea, the idea that pulls, that carries us forward. Words come to the lips; we talk as we walk” p71
“Stopping is like a natural completion: you stop to welcome a new perspective, to breathe in the landscape” p62
“Our feet for a compass” p61
Gros advocates for slowness to be the best possible way of walking. This is something that I will relay in my methodology.
PRACTICE:
To apply walking to practice-based research it might seem simple – go on a walk… I want to experience walking in different ways to see if thought from walking changes. For example, what if I walked backwards, what if I walked in a circle what if I walk on all fours and what if I walked barefoot. An idea that comes to mind is mapping my walking. If I drew out a map of my local area a planned routes to walk that don’t follow to conventional convenient sense of walking straight. Below I will show images of my maps and will give detailed explanations of my walking experiences. I walk these ways to think different thoughts. If I walked backwards, can I walk back on thoughts and essentially back in time? If I walk in a circle, what are the repetitive thoughts I am getting? If I walk barefoot, what experiences will I experience? Will I only be thinking about walking and the way that I am walking or can I think about thought? How to practice walking without thinking about walking?
Here is a mock up of my local park where I go for my ‘think walks’ every morning. This is my format and in pencil I will outline a path for myself to follow. Usually I start at the cricket pitch – take the footpath to the left curving round to the cafe and back down towards the cricket pitch. I like to take this root as is the most cover park of the park by trees, and I like to stop and observe the birds.
The lines in the figure signify the footpaths in the park.
This is experiment 1 – I wanted to walk in loops on and off of paths- the arrows indicated 2 different directions going back and forwards on myself.
This is my experience : I do have a video for this experiment but I was unable to upload it to this blog post as the website is not accepting the YouTube video.
My experience from this exercise : I started out doing a breathing exercise. I took 5 deep breaths in and out to enable me to clear my mind and calm my nervous system. I also started from a public place where people were constantly walking around me. At first I found the exercise ’embarrassing’, as I’m not used to walking in weird ways in public, I tired not to notice the public and listen into my thoughts. I found that when I walked backwards , time felt a lot slower. I was able to observe the area around me more deeply. I also knew that there was nothing behind me so I was free to move wherever I wanted. I found that when I moved backwards to forwards and doing loops that my ears were experiencing so much more, as the walking in different ways was distorting my perception of where sounds were in distance to me. On refection, my intuition started to guide where I was walking and I found I stop thinking about walking and only thought about thought.
This is my second experiment. I wanted to explore a different part of the park that I am not so used to walking around. For this experiment I will only walk forwards as the arrows have indicated.
This is my experience :I do have a video for this experiment but I was unable to upload it to this blog post as the website is not accepting the YouTube video.
My experience from this exercise : As this was my second trial I was instantly more comfortable with walking in different ways in public. I found that my mind was easily a lot more open for thought. My legs started to guide me off of the lines shown above, I found that my intuition started leading me around, moving and walking in different ways. I also found in this exercise that when I walked backwards I was able to think at a slower pace.
This is my third experiment. I wanted to see what thoughts would appear is I just walked in a circle. The diameters of this circle seem small on this page but I am going to do a bigger loop in real life to have more time for thought.
This is my experience : This is the only video that this blog post website would accept. It shows me walking pin a circle
My experience from this exercise : Even though I had a phone in my hand I completely forgot about it. It was funny to see back from the video how small my circle got. As this was my third trial I felt a lot more relaxed and able to walk in this way in an open public space. As I was walking I only really thought about this one sentence “thoughts-thought-together-are-thoughts-thought-through”. For some reason I couldn’t stop repeating it in my head. It was interesting that when I suggested this moving in a circle experiment I said ‘ will my thought be repeating each other’, and the fact that they did is interesting. I wonder if this was a subconscious thing, that because I had suggested it, meant that I ultimately did it.
Reflections from these experiments :
In the methodology it could be interesting to incorporate what I have learnt about walking in different ways into the walking section. I could suggest the participant to walk backwards to observe in different ways. I think that is is important to include in the methodology about letting your intuition guide you. As these deep bodily reactions can tell you a lot about unspoken things such as – if you arrive at the location and you have a feeling of being unwelcome or that you shouldn’t be there, I think it is important to tell the participant to listen to this and move on. This could also be a way that the more-than-human could be trying to communicate with you, as they don’t speak though the human tongue, intuition could be another form of communication.