Listening Exercise

I chose to sit and listen in the basement of the Bizzell Library.  Many of the graduate students study there and it is usually extremely quiet.  At first listen, it might not seem like the best place to do a listening exercise, but there were actually many sounds to experience.  For the first five minutes, I listened to the sounds in my immediate area.  A student not far from me rustled the pages of a textbook.  A professor in heels clacked by on the tile floor.  A fan for the air conditioning whirred above my head and sent cool air down, making me shiver.  Apart from this, it was almost eerily quiet.

When I expanded my awareness to a larger circumference, there was little change.  In an area where silence is emphasized, people go out of their way to make sure they don’t make noise.  However, when I began to really include the whole of my surroundings in my awareness, I picked up sounds I never noticed before.  If I listened extremely close, I could hear people walking on marble of the library lobby above me.  A phone rang in one of the offices deep inside the basement.  A student muttered frustrated whispers at his homework.  Another girl in heels struggled down the stairs to the basement.  Mostly, the sounds of turning pages accompanied by the scratching of pens on the wood tables dominated the scene.

           

If I was looking to frame a photo that would set the scene for all of these sounds, books would be the deciding factor.  In a library, books and studying are the most prominent things.  However, I would also want to include the long, almost spooky tile hallways leading back to the expository writing offices.  Although the sounds were important, I think the most encompassing feature of the environment of the library was the relative silence.  I would want to take a picture that incorporates this silence.  A student carefully turning pages or a woman in heels trying in vain to walk on her tiptoes down the hallway would demonstrate how important silence is to this particular environment.  In this case, the lack of noise is most important to portraying the scene.