Recently, Anne-Marie Shaver and I were interviewed for a radio session that an ASU student from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism is working on. The interview lasted about forty-five minutes, and we were asked a wide array of thought-provoking questions, ranging from how sound can give us clues about the ecological changes occurring in our environment, to how leading weekly soundwalks has expanded our perspective on sound. Before this interview, I don’t think either Anne-Marie or I had introspected this deeply, or considered the long-term personal effects that leading soundwalks has had on us over the past year. When we were asked what we had learned since we’ve started, a flood of emotions, memories, and ideas overpowered me. I couldn’t decide what to say in response, or what was even relevant for the interview. The first thing that I said, though, was that I felt more connected to Anne-Marie.
I suppose it’s the common knowledge that we share that has made me feel this way, or perhaps it’s just because she’s a kind, fun, thoughtful person who I enjoy spending time with. Realistically, though, it’s a combination of both of these things. There are plenty of other examples where people have become close friends due to a shared experience, like being on Survivor or participating in Drum Corps. Soundwalking every week on the ASU Tempe campus, starting with a deep breath at the School of Music fountain, has been no different for us. The chirps, drips, scrapes, bangs, crashes, squeaks, twists, creaks, snaps, scratches, and thumps have all contributed to our understanding of this campus’ culture, environment, patterns, and beauty, but they have also given us a gift, in a certain sense. When I say “the bird tree” or “the echoic stairwell” or “the AC area”, Anne-Marie knows the exact place and sonic phenomenon that I’m referring to, and we can both immerse ourselves into our imaginations and recreate the experience together on command.
One way that this perceptual experience is shared and made more concrete is through the way that the information from soundwalking is archived and stored in our brains. I believe that soundwalking helps create something in our minds very similar to psychology’s concept of the “cognitive map” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/cognitive-map), but more focused on sonic qualities rather than visual ones. The cognitive map is the psychological faculty that allows us to visualize spaces and routes in our minds, making it easier to get around without directions and remember where to find things in our homes. I’m arguing that the sound-driven nature of soundwalks shifts our perception of the world around us in a way that emphasizes the sounds, or the acoustic ecologies of different spaces, rather than the visual qualities when creating our cognitive maps. This shift away from ocular-centrism begins to construct our cognitive maps in a unique way (most likely in a similar manner to the cognitive maps of blind people), where the signifiers for the locations we have visited are no longer shapes, colors, sizes, or designs, but rather pitches, volumes, timbres, and rhythms.
The point I’m making here is that people who share vivid visual cognitive maps often experience some degree of emotional connection, like a group of people seeing a firework show together, or watching the sun succumb to the horizon from a misty mountain peak; and in the same manner, people who share cognitive maps based on sound also share a certain degree of emotional connection – and perhaps even a deeper one. For Anne-Marie and me, our sound-based cognitive maps are essentially one-in-the-same for the ASU Tempe campus, and for that reason, my connection with the sounds of this campus and the beauty and diversity that they hold is directly linked to her. People who experience life in a different way, I have found, experience friendship and connection in a different way, and that’s something I’ll be forever grateful for. Join Anne-Marie and me on a soundwalk and experience this for yourself!