Listen Up to Creation

 We were in Toronto over the weekend, principally to visit with our younger daughter Emily, and to take in two art installations/exhibitions. One was the Ed Burtynksy event as part of Luminato and the other a special exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto -- more to follow on these. 

Emily lives downtown so yesterday, Sunday morning, we were up early and she suggested we drive a few minutes to Tommy Thompson Park, aka the Leslie Street Spit. This human-made "spit" was fill from various demolition and excavation projects in the city beginning in the 1950s and it protrudes several kilometres into Lake Ontario at the bottom of Leslie St. It would never happen today for a host of reasons, including environmental concerns. 

While politicians fussed and dithered over what would become of what began as an eyesore nature stepped in. Despite a base of concrete chunks, bricks, and rebar -- often polluted -- plants and trees told hold and critters decided this would be a reasonable place to live. Today more than 300 bird species and various reptiles and mammals call this home. 

We arrived just past 6:30 AM and there were few others about. We walked for a while and came upon a Bike Share stand, so off we cycled. We saw rabbits and beavers and a mink but it was the presence of birds and birdsong which was music to our ears. The CN Tower is visible from the spit as well as the Toronto skyline of towers but the dawn chorus was underway. Just before 7:00 an almighty din of music started up, likely from a club or party boat. We were a couple of kilometres away, so imagine the poor condo neighbours. That sort of racket is illegal at that hour, but it persisted.

This is World Listening Day, but the opportunity and ability to hear the sounds of Creation is a gift on any day of the year. As I write I hear the wonderful music of falling rain which has intensified and lessened over the past couple of hours. I hear it passing through the leaves of the nearby birch trees and dripping from the eaves. And there is birdsong. These sounds are a gift from the Creator.

Here is a description of World Listening Day: 

• to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology
• to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Listening Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and individual and group efforts to creatively explore phonography
• to design and implement educational initiatives which explore these concepts and practices.

July 18 was chosen as the date for World Listening Day because it is the birthday of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Schafer is one of the founders of the Acoustic Ecology movement. The World Soundscape Project, which he directed, is an important organization which has inspired a lot of activity in this field, and his book Soundscape: The Tuning of the World helped to define many of the terms and background behind the acoustic ecology movement.