I’ve been doing yoga with a large group down on the ocean-front bluffs near the Long Beach Museum of Art. There is a lot more noise than one hears in a yoga studio. The teachers will often tell us to soften our muscles, to breathe into a cramped or stretched part of the body. They will also often invite us to take in the sounds going on, without judgment. Depending on the day of the week and the weather, the combination of sounds can vary a lot. Just as certain thoughts and certain yoga positions can induce a reaction, an unpleasantness perhaps, so can the sounds. When the Harley Davidson engines of weekend cruisers roar by and drown out everything else, it can elicit rage. When the foghorn and engine sounds on Ocean Blvd. merge to create a stable fundamental drone, it can soothe. By following the suggestion of the teachers, I’m finding a way into letting each sound be itself, without my aesthetic opinion.

It’s been a long time since I read John Cage’s Silence. The effect that the book had on my as a youngster was tied closely to a nascent interest in a sort of improvised Buddhist meditation. As Cage suggested a sound world all over that could be taken in with the interest of a devoted concertgoer, I would open my ears to this world as I was then opening them to the avant-garde music I was being exposed to (mostly via Pacifica Radio). The ‘opening’, then, was a connected experience, and the usual discomfort associated with hearing something that vexed would be replaced by a certain calm detachment and perhaps a curiosity. Hearing agreeable sounds that would normally be ignored or taken for granted could now be a source of calm delight.

Somewhere along the line, I lost this ability. I suspect that it’s about ego, the usual culprit in stealing serenity from any moment. For years I have been trying to hear that ‘music inside my head’ and get it in notation or digital audio. This inward-looking process has yielded some good surprises and a unyielding predilection for sublimity, but always with that judgement attached. Is this good? Does it sound like someone else? Am I becoming too antiquated?

Yoga’s got me back in a good place – listening to the variegated strands of noise and pitch and make up Long Beach’s waterfront. Listening with more interest than I have felt in the concert hall in years.