Reconstruction 7.2 (2007)
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Women of the New Walden: Gender in Sound Culture, Now and Then [1] / Phylis Johnson
Abstract: Sonic diversity in the midst of wilderness, as original and untamed, can confound and discomfort the novice listener who becomes overwhelmed by its plethora of mysterious languages. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, author of Summer on the Lakes (1844), expressed sensory overload when she was confronted with the sights and sounds of Niagara Falls. Sound permeates our life, from conception, birth, and varied sonic spheres of influence that penetrate our physical space. Sound acknowledges its relevance as a cultural influence within the socialization of the individual. For instance, high-powered car stereos and subwoofers swimming in bass overtones have become associated with masculinity. This paper investigates the idea of sound as culture, and how gender, ethnicity, space and other factors create a multiplicity of sonic spheres of influence that impact our perception of events. An on-going listening study that explores the intersection of gender, sound, and cultural (as well as physical) space will be discussed. Personal stories emerge as sound weaves a narrative (as soundscape) that is composed of the memories and daily impressions of women. It is a return to Merchant's Eden , Fuller's Summer on the Lakes , and Thoreau's Walden .
Photo by Jennifer Johnson: New England town off the coast of Massachusetts
Toward a Definition of Sound Culture
<1> Ecofeminist author Carolyn Merchant has written on how science and myth have shaped our perceptions and political and social dialogue on the environment, which has ultimately led to the erosion of nature and its definition in masculine terms. Her book, Reinventing Eden (2003), focuses on the fate of nature in Western culture and industrialization. Neil Evernden's The Social Creation of Nature presents the environment as a social construction that man has attempted to control merely by his definition of it. Max Oelschlaegger, William Cronon, Thomas Dunlap, and others have wrestled with man's place in nature and the idea of wilderness. In Faith in Nature, Dunlap elaborates on the works of Euro-American writers that propel the myth of individualism in an industrialized society. In essence, the voice and language of nature become defined and perhaps defiled through the wants and needs of humans. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, became evidence for a social and technological pendulum that swung too far toward consumerism and industrialization. R. Murray Schafer, upon his debut of Tuning of the World in 1977, inspired a global move called acoustic ecology that would call for sound preservation amidst increased industrialization and environmental degradation. It was a movement that would impact composer Hildegard Westerkamp (then a graduate student) to include natural and constructed soundscapes into her compositions.
<2> Sonic diversity in midst of wilderness, as original and untamed, can confound and discomfort the novice listener who is overwhelmed by a plethora of mysterious languages Hence, one might ask, who decides what sounds are worthy of preservation or composition? Jacques Attali, Jonathan Sterne, Charles Keil, and Steven Feld have asked scholars and practitioners to consider the cultural implications of using machines to capture natural and man-made soundscapes. To begin to respond to these concerns, one should contemplate on the political process of sonic negotiation among individuals and societies during momentary lapses of cultural stability, at which point identity space may be reinterpreted contextually and temporally. Emily Thompson (1-2) demarcates this transition as the beginning of the "soundscape of modernity," which ultimately created a unique culture of listening that began at the turn of the 20 th century. Aligning her work with those of scholars Nancy Fraser and Michael Dawson, Catherine Squires points out that counter publics "give oppressed and/or marginalized groups arenas for deliberation outside the surveillance of the dominant group" (75). One's preference of music genre, orality, and urban or rural spaces as well as an individual's emotive and physical aurality are examples of the breadth to which sound as culture might be defined conceptually. Hence, might one begin to perceive noise among various social groups as the "space between cultures?" (Breinig & Lösch 26). To illustrate, individuals seek identity within multiple collectives based on personal histories and perspectives. Certain songs can bring people together, or just as easily alienate them from each other. Areas of difference, or perceptual gaps, within groups should be conceptualized as noise. Individuals, as a result, might form subcultures, outside their dominant group, that embrace certain culturally rejected sounds. Consequently, the space between cultures is comprised of listeners who represent a variety of groups. Further, sound culture has often been casually couched as the propensity of certain individuals toward urbanity or rurality, and such limited conceptions fail to adequately address the dominant politics embedded within humanity, industrialization (and digitization), and the sciences. Sound plays a central role in the shaping of one's perspective in nearly every arena of study.
<3> Of the most fundamental level, individuals are shaped by their sound environment within respective geographies - rural or urban. The principle of sound culture should also be extended to the study of first and third world cities, in terms of differences and similarities among sonic environments and any subsequent perceptual interpretation and societal representation of those spaces. Westerkamp would ask that one contextualize compositions within the producer's social and political perceptions. The artist's gender might provide a unique perspective on how to interpret the piece. According to Katherine Norman, all sound leaves impressions on an individual's life, as listener and producer (3). John Connell and Chris Gibson ponder the degree to which sound has amplified the concerns of social change through the narratives and music of various groups. Industrialization, particularly between 1890 and 1930, produced a new type of modern noise that challenged prior ways of interpreting life through one's sonic environment. Sterne's work has explored how the dissonant sounds of industrialization beckoned society to reinterpret urban spaces, from mechanical strife to rhythmic serenade.What is introduced as noise is soon assimilated into the soundscape of society. This message is embedded within the modern work of Attali's Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Keil and Feld's Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, and Thompson's The Soundscape of Modernity.
<4> A century earlier, "Sarah" Margaret Fuller was dismayed at the new American immigrants' inability or unwillingness to hear and see the beauty of nature; rather they readily sought new ways to dominate and commercialize the new frontier:
It grieved me to hear these immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, not of the unfolding nobler energies, but of more ease, and larger accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon cease, there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West, where the clash of material interests is so noisy. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the war of words on these subjects, and believe it only sows the wind to reap the whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West. (18: italics added)
In this essay, I attempt to illustrate how modernity and mysticism were captured through the "sound" observations of Transcendentalists like Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). It might be easily argued that Fuller became one of the movements' most ardent critics. Through her writings and those of Thoreau, one begins to hear nature's voice, as a sonic identity emerges through their narratives and aural descriptions . Observations become contextualized within their memories of conversations, experiences, and readings. In a similar manner, findings from a survey that I conducted provide insight into the sound perceptions of women and men, who shared their sound memories and favorite soundscapes from childhood to their present age.
<5> The ephemeral quality of sound itself seems to fit within the transitory conception of Transcendentalism. Sound is always in the process of creation. In Audio Culture edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, several composers and theorists discuss the cultural aspects and origins of modern sound. Among the 20 th century essayists included in the book are Luigi Russolo, Pauline Oliveros, and John Cage. As composers, their work was influenced by Thoreau's views on sound and solitude Thoreau's writings became the starting point for what would become known as sound culture and electronic music. Fuller and Thoreau were compelled to appreciate and document their spirituality, and that of others, during the transitional years from naturalism toward industrialism. The work of Fuller, unfortunately and mistakenly, has been overlooked and not acknowledged as a source of inspiration for Thoreau's naturalist writings.
<6> For this reason, I have compared and contrasted the sonic awareness and identities of Fuller and Thoreau in the next section through their primary naturalist and autobiographical writings. After which, I have contextualized their work within the results of my sound survey, with particular attention given toward revealing similarities and differences among women and men as participants. Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie in their book Mixed Methodology: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches provide the framework for this study's eclectic approach toward understanding how gender might be a significant factor in the definition and elaboration of sound culture. Thoreau and Fuller had drawn upon literature, history and mythology to supply meaning to the intricate sounds and sights documented in their journal writings. Their observations and interpretations offer readers a glimpse into gendered sound culture (that inadvertently set the stage for the ecological voices of Carson, Merchant, and Westerkamp in latter years). In this essay, I have used Thoreau and Fuller as a point of entrance upon which to investigate the phenomena of sound culture that had emerged during Transcendentalism in the midst of the industrialization of the Western world.
Transcendentalism, Modernity and Gendered Sonic Spaces
<7> Soundscapes, in their totality, of urban and rural geographies provide listeners with an opportunity to participate in aural contextualization (e.g., ambience, voice, music and noise) and allow for comparison among personal and public sonic spheres, beyond their communities. Schafer states the world's music primarily exists in "counterpoise to the soundscape" ("Music, Non-music and the Soundscape" 36). The groundbreaking work of postmodern anthropologist David Harvey has set in motion a re-exploration of how people move in and out of space; individuals transcend their ethnicity beyond and in spite of cultural norms. Memories savor the ideal of culture; nevertheless ethnicity, gender, and other characteristics do not adequately explain affiliation and alienation among individuals at any given moment or place, particular circumstance, or source of inspiration:
Photo by Jennifer Johnson: Walden Pond is located on the outskirts of Concord, MA
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
A clear and ancient harmony
Pierces my soul through all its din,
As through its utmost melody--
Farther behind than they, farther within.
excerpt from Thoreau's poem Inspiration (qtd. In Witherell 557)
<8> Transcendentalism, in philosophy and practice, heightened a sense of environmental nostalgia as urban and rural spaces collided with modernity. Puritanism failed to capture the divine organization and spiritual expression within one's life that might be otherwise revealed, according to transcendentalism, through introspection. The essays of Thoreau and Fuller provide a framework upon which to contextualize changes in soundscape, and ultimately one is presented with a bridge between old and new culture. The coming industrial age is symbolically represented through Fuller's steamships and Thoreau's locomotives, as evidenced by their respective writings on nature of the upper Midwest and New England. Fuller's 1844 edition of Summer on the Lakes logs her travels through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, and some of the sounds that she heard: " I used to hear the girls singing and laughing as they were cutting down boughs at Mackinaw; this part of their employment, though laborious, gives them the pleasure of being a great deal in the free woods" (245).
<9> Alas, Fuller contextualized her experiences within a series of conversations. Much of her writings involve her aural interactions with people of various ethnicities and cultures. Fuller, along with her lover and child, died in a storm only a few hundred feet from the New York harbor in 1849 after traveling across Europe. As far as her other contributions, Fuller edited theTranscendentalists' Dial; she also published Woman in the Nineteenth Century in 1845. One year later she served as a foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune and visited women prisoners at Sing Sing. Fuller and her friend Elizabeth Palmer Peabody were the original members of the Transcendental Club, a New England collective of intellectuals who were dismayed with the state of American literature and philosophy. Fuller, within that group, helped to develop a utopian experiment called Brook Farm and consequently offered a unique perspective to Transcendentalism - as a feminist.
<10> In contrast, Thoreau blended into his landscape; he noted his observations and interactions with his environment introspectively. In 1845, he would begin to write about an 1839 canoe trip on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers three years after his brother had died. He would also spend two years in Walden Woods. He would retreat into the solitude of the woods, although he could not completely escape the occasional visitor or sound of the locomotive that signaled the arrival of goods to the merchants gathered at the center of town. The sound of nature and roar of machine would become intertwined into one composition. Walden Pond was not only a place, but a concept not bound to Concord, Massachusetts. [2] Thoreau made three journeys outside of Walden and would eventually write about his experiences in the Maine woods: " [T]he poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness". [3]
Margaret Fuller: The Sonic Frontier
<11>Fuller documented a new America challenged by wilderness and inescapable industrialization. She was the first woman on the staff of the New YorkTribune. Fuller was a pioneer reporter on this new frontier, and she eventually became t he first woman foreign and war correspondent of the United States. Biographies of Fuller describe her as a Transcendentalist and feminist. Her life was shaped by her association with Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and others, yet her avid reading and first hand experience had the greatest influence on her writings. Her first recorded stop at Niagara on June 10, 1843 indicated her awareness of the larger social and cultural landscape that surrounded and encompassed the physical environment:
The perpetual trampling of the waters seized my senses. I felt that no other sound, however near, could be heard, and would start and look behind me for a foe. I realized the identity of that mood of nature in which these waters were poured down with such absorbing force, with that in which the Indian was shaped on the same soil (Fuller 5).
<12> She struggled to shake off embedded stereotypes of her New England upbringing and found wisdom in a river that "seem[ed] to whisper mysteries the thundering voice [of the water fall] above could not proclaim" (6). Fuller sought meaning in this new experience:
As I rode up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life's hopes. I lounged about the rooms, read the stage bills upon the walls, looked over the register, and, finding the name of an acquaintance, sent to see if he was still there. What this hesitation arose from, I know not; perhaps it was a feeling of my unworthiness to enter this temple which nature has erected to its God (11).
In her writings, one begins to hear her speak on behalf of nature. Beyond the obvious, Fuller's observations also capture and document the silence of frontier women, the Native American, and nature. She appears distraught when she begins to cast the natural beauty and intellect of women, they being in a similar predicament to nature as comparatively underappreciated and irrelevant within a male constructed social and political order (and likewise dismissed by many frontier women themselves). Fuller observes and notes the artificial boundaries that separate man from woman, European from Native American, and people from nature. In essence, immigrants and settlers came to the Midwest to claim a material and artificial freedom: "To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford stimulus enough" (Fuller 59).
<13> One can hear the soft voice of nature, a faintness of birds chirping for example, in Fuller's writing. However, one readily senses the oppression and desperate cries of Fuller's subjects through her eyes. Her visual depictions magnify what is and is not heard or masked by silence. An uncomfortable, perhaps unnatural, silence emerges from her text. Susan Belasco Smith (1991) explains how Fuller's perspectives challenged Emerson and her other male counterparts, as well as the very ideals of Transcendentalism. Fuller sought truth in both nature and the character of its inhabitants. One begins to form an image of a comparatively naïve, college-educated Thoreau, 23, through the writings of 30 year-old Fuller. Biographer Margaret Bell helps us to picture Thoreau through Fuller's words: He is a young man who is "very fond of the classics and an earnest thinker, yet intends being a farmer. He has a great deal of practical sense, and as he has bodily sense to boot; he may look to be a successful and happy man. He has a boat which he made himself, and rows me out on the pond" (123).
<14> The year of their meeting was 1840. Thoreau had just completed his historical canoe trip. And in three years, Fuller would begin her journey from Massachusetts to Niagara Falls and move westward. Thoreau most likely had not even contemplated his book Walden. He would read of Fuller's summer travels in 1843, and then self publish Walden nearly ten years later. The sounds of waterfalls, thunder, steamships and children's laughter had drawn Fuller's attention. Thoreau appears taken by the sounds of birds and the nearby train. Thoreau, like Fuller, is often disheartened, yet curious, when he attempts to identify and explore the sometimes undistinguishable spatial boundaries of natural and emergent man-made environments and soundscapes.
Thoreau: Modernity Sounds of Walden
Photo by Jennifer Johnson: Original location of Thoreau's Cabin, Walden's Pond 2005.
<15> Imagine what Thoreau felt when he heard the Fitchburg train intersect across the sonic terrain of Walden. He evaluated the train not merely by its sight, for one speculates from his words that he could only see its form at a distance. His cabin was nestled among the woods less than one quarter mile away from the Fitchburg Railroad stop. The train crossed near the southern tip of the pond, and its morning arrival was often cloaked by its own billowing clouds of smoke and the woods that stood between society and Thoreau: "I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular" ( Chapter 4 in Thoreau Reader: http). Thoreau was influenced by the philosophical convergence of spiritually and materiality, which for him began with his Unitarian upbringing and prospered through time spent with mentor Emerson. Thoreau's Walden was a spiritual journey through sound and silence and his means toward greater introspection (Lambdin 59; Sherman 511).
<16> The aural passage of Thoreau's "train" travels between an inner and outer sanctuary called Walden. It is a proximity juxtaposed by the sounds of modernity and nature. The revelatory translation of the experienced sound is captured by his divine language, through which he exclaims words of praise, fear, and wonder in his writings. The railroad (in all its word forms) is mentioned 55 times by Thoreau in Walden, and the majority of these references are found in the first three chapters. The train whistle glides through the acoustical realm on one occasion; another time it is a crude iron beast that dominates the soundscape. Perhaps it is change in atmospheric pressure that accentuates the whistle for Thoreau, for that is a common meteorological phenomenon. Or perhaps, it is Thoreau's perspective that evolves and devolves as he contemplates meaning from his observations. So it is not surprising that sound has the potential to promote both assimilation and alienation to the listener in a moment:
The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side ( Chapter 4 in Thoreau Reader: http).
<17> For two years, Thoreau lived near Walden Pond, a 62-acre pond with partly wooded shores. The area stretches into nearby Concord, Massachusetts, and it is approximately 15 miles west of Boston. W. Barksdale Maynard's Walden Pond: A History explores the historical connection between the woods, pond, and town. What one must speculate upon is how Thoreau perceived his spiritual connection between Walden, America, and the world. Thoreau sensed not the absolute liberation that Walden might ideally provide him. There was a power that emanated from the locomotive that raced swiftly across towns and countryside, with little consideration to sonic boundaries. Thoreau withdrew into the woods as he sought a deeper understanding of himself initially, and then of Walden itself. It was a time and space appropriate for independent thought, amidst and apart from the nearby intellectual and social community. It existed less than a mile from his house. The train skirted the borders of Walden; its sonicity traveled through the woods and impressed upon Thoreau's ears, imagination, and writings. It enticed and entangled the individual:
That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? ( Chapter 9b in Thoreau Reader: http)
<18> It is interesting that Thoreau's discussion of the Fitchburg train is heavily concentrated in the chapter, Sound. He expressed a dichotomous sonic spirituality within natural and manufactured spaces. He was attentive to the sounds of birds, yet he spent much time contemplating the train that crossed his sonic terrain. The train was a reminder of the simultaneous "spiritual" distance and convergence between his sound sphere and the burgeoning modernized world: "…we think that if rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided" ( Chapter 18 in Thoreau Reader: http). The roar and the rumble encroached upon the natural sound of his woods. Nature and machine inevitably became part of one sonicscape.
The Sound Journal Project
<19> A young Canadian woman recalled dogs barking, traffic sounds, and house and school noises from her childhood. She remembered visiting a waterfall during her sixth birthday.The sound markers across one's life are often rooted in the "first" impressions that arise during one's daily journey of discovery, rather than from any critical events. An African-American woman who grew up listening to Elton John, Prince, Tears for Fears, Fleetwood Mac, and Peter Frampton wrote: "At the time I hated it, but whenever I hear 'Do You Feel Like I Do,' I see my mother in her blue housecoat vacuuming and dusting around the house and singing in a horrible pitch. Not to mention the fact that I now love that song." These are only a few of the sonic memories captured by the author's sound survey.
<20> 64 adults (26 women; 38 men), primarily college students, ages 18-34, participated in a sound study and journaling project conducted by the author. The instrument was pre-tested on a sample of students. The project was conducted during 2004, while the analysis of the data was completed in 2005. The method of sampling was purposive, with the target being university students [4]. The instrument is based on a series of questions posed by leading sound educators to help listeners engage in a sound analysis of their surroundings [5]. Thirty-five respondents (22 men; 13 women) were coded as USA citizens. Thirty four respondents were U.S. undergraduate students. Twenty-nine respondents were international students (16 men; 13 women). The homelands identified by internationals included East and Southeast Asia, Europe, South America, Mexico, Haiti, and Africa. [6]
<21> Approximately half of the non-US-citizens surveyed were graduate students, while the other half of this group was undergraduate students. Four respondents did not attend Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL ( USA), but attended or recently graduated from Asian universities. Among the U.S. respondents, 12 (9 men; 3 women) never lived in or visited another country. However, nearly all were well-traveled across the United States. Locations outside USA lived or visited were primarily within Europe, Mexico, and Canada. Sixteen respondents lived in the same town since their birth. Among international respondents, nearly all were well-traveled across the USA and Europe. Other less frequented locations were in Asia. All but 3 international respondents visited or lived in the USA for 10 weeks to 8 years.
<22> The survey began with a prompting exercise to initiate a recall of sound events (a 30 minute listening exercise that asked participants to focus on a particular sound at a self-selected location). Participants were then asked to recall dominating soundmarks (childhood and adult experiences that bring back vivid sound memories), as well as the specific sounds and emotions attached to those memories. They were asked to define noise as it applies to their daily listening experiences, as well as their favorite soundscapes or places to listen to sound. Along this line, they were asked to identify the type of community and its surroundings (urban, rural, animals, traffic, special sounds) in which they lived from ages 1-6, 6-13, and 13-18 years. [7]
<23> Two-thirds of all respondents selected sonic spaces that would trigger memories, mainly from their childhood. Respondents were asked to respond to a series of questions based on a 30 minute sitting at a particular location of their choice. Locations varied among individuals, from campus hallways to apartments to parks. They were asked to focus on one sound, and how it impacted their ability to hear other sounds in their environment as well as to note any emotions triggered by the sounds. Three sound categories were evident:
- nature (birds, wind, insects especially crickets and bees)
- machines (air conditioners, vehicles, computers, lawnmowers)
- humans (walking, talking, laughing, coughing, doors opening)
Machine and human sounds dominated the self-selected listening sites for men and women. For many participants, the gentle hum of computers and keyboarding blended into the backdrop of their home or a computer lab; this hum had become a natural part of their indoor soundscape. Men appeared to recall sonic memories associated with machines (trains, cars, traffic, planes, dryers, faxes) more than those of the women respondents; nature sounds (rain, insects, birds, squirrels) were reported least for both genders. Compared to male respondents, women tended to recall human sounds over machine sounds. Many women of this listening study appeared tuned to conversations that surrounded their daily soundscapes.
<24> Most respondents (even urbanites) reported that they enjoyed listening to rural soundscapes, such as those identified around lakes, woods, picnics, and backyards (playground, swings, etc.). [8] These natural locations often triggered memories of family experiences. The recollection of family memories were typically positive experiences, whereas "neighborhood" sound memories of lawn mowers, cars, trains, and buses, and other "noises" provoked mixed emotions at times. Nearly all respondents reported a sense of continuity in their childhood residence and/or family structure. Their present sound observations noted simple sound events - every day natural and man-made sounds - that triggered family and neighborhood memories. Certain songs also triggered family and friend centered memories among several respondents. Songs, rather than sounds, for many respondents, defined their latter stage of childhood.
<25> Sound markers that emerged from respondents had little to do with nationality, but more often seemed to be attributed to the rurality and/or urban nature of their community and a feeling of continuity and safety within one's life (e.g., whether an individual moved; harmony within the family and community space). Overall, participants universally cherished the sound of crickets, birds, wind, and leaves, especially when set against the increasingly unavoidable backdrop of modernity - machines that transport, comfort, and disrupt humanity. At times, these sounds converged into one impression, as exemplified in this observation by a U.S. man:
While I was in the computer lab today, I was transported into the woods. As I sat typing I became aware of the hum that the computers made. This sound remarkably resembled the sound of crickets singing their nightly songs in a rural area. I began to think about fishing at my Grandfather's farm and the sound of wilderness that surrounds the area.
One Indonesian woman reported:
I heard the sound of my computer, vehicles passing by on this very quiet night. The sound of the vehicles on this empty road reminds me of the place where I came from. There, many street sellers displayed their merchandise with coconut oil lamps. This sound makes me feel peaceful and calm.
The sounds of cars, buses, and trains provided comfort through familiarity. Hums, buzzes, and chatter that abruptly enter into one's personal space, air conditioning units that turn on and off, loud people in nearby apartments, parks, or restaurants, and noisy insects expended the patience of many respondents.
The Quest for the Nostalgic in the Natural
<26> Sound is woven into one's life through impressions and events that provide opportunity to interpret or reinterpret relevance, often inadvertently, of these memories. It is rare that one takes the time to ponder why s/he likes some sounds and songs, and not others. The overall findings from the survey suggest that sounds contribute to memory reconstruction and one's perception of ideal soundscapes, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, and gender, although I must concede to the limitations of this study. The work of Jonathan Sterne and David Harvey helps one situate rural and urban sound within a universal soundscape that sweeps beyond, although a collective of, distinct geographies of time and space and human experience. Thoreau's Walden and his train have been infused harmoniously for more than 150 years. Visitors flock to Walden Pond to explore Thoreau's stomping grounds, yet the experience will likely be unique to each listener. Thoreau was fascinated with the sound of industrialization - a train crossing through the natural sonicity of Walden becomes the universal representation for modernity and urbanity.
<27> In my own study, both men and women described a natural setting as their favorite soundscape. However, in the first part of this study, they chose a setting, perhaps out of convenience, that was filled with a mix of human and machine sounds for their sound listening site. In other words, most respondents did not select "nature" when given the opportunity during the sound exercise. Yet, when respondents were asked to later describe their favorite soundscape, they wrote of a nostalgic natural environment - which is a construction of their childhood memories and imagination. Some participants mingled the sounds of rural and urban environments, such as a soundscape where keyboarding on laptops, the swish of traffic on a country road, and the patter of rain drops become one sonic mix. Perhaps, a new generation of transcendentalists has emerged that seeks the divine in a virtual environment - a sonic and visual matrix of seemingly infinite and genderless possibilities on the one hand. On the other hand, this brave new world is sometimes constructed within a scientific and technological framework of nostalgic masculine representation. This concern is a critical theme in the work of eco-feminist Carol Merchant. Her writings alert the reader to the human and technological impact on nature. Concurrently, my study revealed women tend to focus beyond noise to hear conversations. Men far less distinguish between noises made by people and machines than women, and in fact they seem to appreciate the bold sounds of technology more than the human voice at times. Particularly, women voices are heard as shrill and loud by some men respondents.
<28> Fuller, unlike her male counterparts, did not wholly embrace Transcendentalism. As she sought her identity as a woman in both the spiritual and physical world, Fuller became more interested in the people who intersected with her conceptual wilderness, a feeling of self and social alienation, than the physicality of nature. She struggled to find her voice in a male-dominated society, in which frontier women and Native Americans were captive to a renewed thirst for materialism and environmental exploitation. At times, nature, in all its glory, seems ornamental for Fuller. Alas, listen closely - one begins to hear Fuller's contempt and concern for the new Americans who comprehend nature as a tool rather than a treasure.
<29> Thoreau believed that inner, and perhaps even social, peace was derived from mediation in a natural environment. Thoreau documented thoroughly the beauty and sounds of nature, and by doing so he may have thought that he provided completeness to what Fuller had silenced in her writings. Both listened with their ears and eyes, and nature afforded them the space and solitude to contemplate on the meaning of their experiences. However, Fuller's writings offer a glimpse into her struggle as a highly educated woman seeking her voice in a social and political wilderness. Her words still speak relevance today toward discussions of gendered environmental spaces in underdeveloped regions of the world and to Western societies, especially amidst the digital convergence of urban and rural soundscapes. .
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Notes
[1] The author uses Walden as a metaphorical concept in the title of this article. Walden is a physical place, as well as a concept that invites social and spiritual interpretations of space. [^]
[2] Thoreau Abroad , edited by Eugene F. Timpe, is a 1971 collection of work from scholars across the world documenting Thoreau's influence abroad. The chapter "Thoreau in Japan" by Katsuhiko Takeda draws comparisons between Japanese naturalist writers and Thoreau's writings on solitude. [^]
[3] In the last months of his life, Thoreau moved to Minnesota. He died in 1862. [^]
[4] Data collection for the next round is on-going. [^]
[5] The survey instrument incorporated open-end questions and exercises designed by The Acoustic Ecology Institute, Darren Copeland, and Gary Ferrington. [^]
[6] Population characteristics are represented in Table 1. [^]
[7] Based on the survey categories designated by Ferrington (2005). [^]
[8] For a complete breakdown of favorite natural soundscapes among women and men respondents, see Table 2. [^]
Table 1: Population Characteristics
| White | Asian | Black | Hispanic | ||
USA (35) |
|||||
| M (22) | 19 | 1 | 2 | 0 | |
| F (13) | 6 | 1 | 6 | 0 | |
INT (29) |
|||||
| M (16) | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | |
| F (13) | 3 | 7 | 0 | 3 |
Table 2: Sample Favorite Natural Soundscapes
| Male | Female |
| camping, listening to wind | breeze on a fall day |
| waterfalls, corn field | thunderstorm |
| bottom of creek | forest in the rain |
| My cabin in Wisconsin | animals all around |
| Empty field, front of sea | woods, wind, animals |
| On a light at night | bugs at night |
| Crickets in wild | crickets, locusts |
| In fields - listening to wind | birds, breeze, water |
| Lake in my hometown | ocean and beach |
| boat docks at night | anywhere with water |
| Deep woods, stream, river | park |
| Near a body of water, stream | lake |
| Country setting, park | forest |
| Outside by a pond |
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