Documenting an experience and reaction

“Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”

-Sonic Meditation V (Native) (1974)

Before the class on Thursday, Dr Louise Marshall asked us to try and take ten minutes to experience the process. It was a great experience and the process gave me an amazing feeling. The experience was actually very similar to the previous experience of walking around the park with my eyes closed and listening, both trying to feel the sound with a single sense. Before I was trying to feel the sound with my ears only, and this time I was with my sense of touch only. But the element of night, again, makes this experience different from the previous one.

The night brought a quieter environment and I turned off the lights in my room and explored my room slowly with barefoot. This space, which I knew so well, still managed to surprise me. When I try to feel the sound with my feet, I get a more subtle texture of sound.

I once read a theory that sound can cause a physiological reaction in the body, that certain frequencies of sound can cause a shiver in the body or cause psychological fear.

What I felt from this experience is that the reverse of this theory also makes sense. Sound can be felt through contact with the body.