Hear the Sweeter Sounds

Having written an article on heuristics, I landed on an idea: call and be called.

It felt like a simple mental exercise — a way to offset the illusion of existential aloneness, or perhaps more accurately, existential independence. In embracing an active, unfolding relationship with the subjective other, I began to see it as a principle of insideness.

If I practised the idea habitually, I thought, I might nurture a greater sense of being inside something greater — an ecological consciousness. But having posted the article, and tacitly committed myself to the idea, I was left with the question: how does this work?

I was sitting in the therapy room where I practise. Tired. Dull. Empty-headed.
How does this work?

Anyone who knows me will testify — I never stop. There’s always another job. And I realised, acutely, that my constant busy-ness gets in the way of receiving a call.

I’m guilty of the social media scroll. So after a disgracefully short period of time had expired, and in my impatience and uncertainty, I picked up my phone. It’s so easy, after all. Easier than engaging with something that might ask more of me. But I caught myself and instead made a decision, in that moment at least, to exclude the junk information.

And then there was only emptiness. Dullness. Boredom even.

That’s the thing about being so busy: you can’t ever be bored, because there’s always another job to fill the gap. But rather than give myself another task, I resolved to wait.

If I was to receive my answering call, I would have to be patient enough to wait for it. It would arrive when it was ready.

But was I waiting for Godot?

My mind began to wander.

It wandered to a memory I hadn’t touched for a decade or more. I was thirteen, back home in Brighouse with my mum and my brother. We had two cats, Mitsy and Suki.

Suki had lived more or less in the cellar — a highly anxious cat. I felt a rush of fear, remembering her, afraid she’d had an unhappy life. When I was younger, I thought she didn’t like me because she was always hiding. I couldn’t quite understand that it wasn’t personal.

Then I remembered how I’d started spending time in the cellar. Sitting quietly, I let her come to me. And she did — purring, affectionate. After a while, I started carrying her upstairs, and she gradually became more confident.

In that split second of remembering — the fear that she’d been unhappy, and the relief that her story had changed — I felt something move.

I stepped out into the street on my way to catch a bus. It was a Saturday evening. From inside a pub came the muffled sound of a male singer, his melody spilling into the street. Cigarette smoke drifted from the crowd outside.

Waiting for a ‘call’, I found the music taking on a different significance. I imagined singers performing in pubs and taverns for generations before — this moment just a recurrence of a pattern propagated through centuries.

Passing another building, the Market Hall, I noticed the inscription: erected to commemorate the Coronation of King George V, 1911. Open to the call, I imagined the people of Wetherby back then, and all the lives that had played out in this town centre since.

This openness gave me a slightly spaced-out feeling - reminiscent of music festivals in my twenties - of an altered-state of awareness.

On the bus, a man was watching the England–India test match on his phone. Again, I thought of patterns repeating through generations — the rhythm of international cricket tours nested within wider tides of social change.

Back home, I felt a more mundane calling: a bowl of washing up.

Still in my call and be called reverie, I noted that I had responded. I might have chosen not to — and the world would have gone on without me — but I saw through the task that needed doing.

The kitchen window was open; evening was drawing in. I closed it and felt like a caretaker or steward within something greater.

A line from the Bible came to mind, one my grandmother used to quote — John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many rooms.”

It was a lucid experience of decentring — as though I were living in some vast commune, everyone side by side, tending to a great shared estate.

Outside, the birds were singing as the sun set. I imagined they were responding to their own calling, as I was to mine.

And then came a small realisation: the call is not for me — it’s for us.

It isn’t quite the I–Thou of a singular cosmic dialogue, but something broader, more musical — like walking through a landscape of sound, or the terrains of an enormous mindscape.

I noticed my own information processing at a distance — thoughts of my academic work swirling around. But for once, I wasn’t swept along. I just noticed.

The moment passed, of course. The novelty wore off. Dullness returned. The to-do list reclaimed its pre-eminence. That temporary shift in consciousness passed.

On Monday morning, there were 113 items on my to-do list. Each one a fragment of thought, a micro-processing of tasks, my inner chatter structured into order.

Then came an email from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). Normally, I’d delete it — too busy for that kind of thing. But in the spirit of call and be called, I paused and opened it.

It was about recognising the songs of migrating birds returning to our shores after a summer abroad — focusing particularly on the redwing.

I felt a wave of gratitude. Not just for the birds themselves, but for the people who care enough to write about them — to say, look, this wonder of nature is happening just outside your back door.

I allowed myself to be called by it.

And a phrase came into my mind:
hear the sweeter sounds.

A variant on a theme.

Hear the sweeter sounds.