Presence and sound waves

We exist in a vibrational universe. Our presence in the world is of a wave-like nature, and we can influence the quality of our presence through awareness of the vibrations that traverse and surround us.

Our Environment

We are immersed in a vibrational universe, which constitutes us biologically and physically, and in which we evolve. These are materials in vibration, in resonance, in echo, or in dissonance—materials that are themselves, at the atomic level, almost primarily composed of undulating emptiness. At the atomic level, the different chemical elements are distinct vibrational frequencies of elementary particles. Thus, fundamentally, we could see ourselves as a vibrating mass present in a vibrating universe, more or less harmonious or disharmonious.

Our presence in the world is therefore, physically and biologically, of a vibrational nature. But what capacity do we have to modify, improve, or consciously choose the quality of our presence within the vibrational dimension of all existence? We have the ability and the power to immerse ourselves in the sound waves we choose: listening to music, walking through city streets, a forest, mountains, or by the sea plunges our body into a sound environment entirely different in nature, intensity, tone, and frequency…

Our Frequency

Frequency is the number of vibrations per second in a medium (air, water, solid), through compression and expansion. For now, I’ll set aside the atomic nature of matter, which is far more affected by electromagnetic waves; I’m considering it in terms of our perception of “mechanical waves.” A gas, such as air, or a liquid, like water. If you throw a stone into water, the energy from the stone’s speed compresses the water, which then expands: we see waves form at the point of impact, a deep trough that immediately rises and produces these waves propagating through the medium. The elasticity of the material causes the wave to rise and fall (compression-expansion), diminishing over time and distance due to the resistance and elasticity of the material. This is why we speak of waves, of something that pulses and transmits. Matter vibrates. Frequency is the number of vibrations per second, the number of back-and-forth movements per second of the vibration in this medium. It is measured in Hertz. 50 Hertz equals 50 vibrations per second, for example.

Sound waves, the subject of this article, are a type of “mechanical” wave. The perception of low or high-pitched sounds depends on the vibration frequency of the air. Sound is merely a vibration of air transmitted to the eardrum in our ear, which is set into vibration by the surrounding air. Audible sounds range from 20 Hertz (20 vibrations per second) to 20,000 Hertz (20,000 vibrations per second). 20 Hertz is a very deep sound. 20,000 Hertz is an extremely high-pitched sound.

Our Presence

The concept of presence I’m developing aims for a deeper connection of oneself to the world. This article is only a brief introduction intended to raise awareness of the impact of sound waves on our presence. This involves listening to the sounds around us, which requires silence—an active, floating listening, free of thought, not focused on what the sounds represent but on how they affect us sensibly. This is a way to anchor our presence in the world. I emphasize that the exercise of listening is not merely a sensitive, subjective, intellectual, or even meditative exercise. It is a practice that concretely works on the physiological resonance between our inner vibrations and the vibrations of the external world. This listening modifies our internal vibrational rhythms to bring them into resonance. Resonance, as we know, amplifies. Thus, an exercise in attentive listening amplifies certain human capacities by resonating external sound waves with our internal vibrational states. We’ve always sensed that thought has a physiological effect. This has been scientifically proven in recent years through measurements of meditative states.

I’m thus introducing a practice of presence to the sound waves around us. Everyone will invent their own way of embodying it. Some by listening to music they love, others by immersing themselves in soundscapes they find soothing, some through “gong baths,” and still others by making music, for example. The resonance of our inner world with the vibrations of the external world will also produce, through the very effect of resonance, a resonance of our inner vibrations—an impact of our inner vibrations, through resonance, on the external world. This might seem almost excessive: how could we, small beings, have an impact just through our inner vibration on such a vast external world? And how could this work bidirectionally when we are first and foremost receivers of external vibrations? I’ll explain it very simply using the example of a microphone and a loudspeaker, which are essentially the same object used in two ways.

The Transducers

A microphone is a membrane, like a very thin sheet of paper, set into motion by the vibration of the surrounding air. Attached to this membrane is a small perpendicular metal rod that also vibrates. The vibrations of this rod are proportional in intensity to the sound volume and in frequency to the lows and highs. For low sounds, the air vibrates more slowly, and so does the metal rod; for high-pitched sounds, the air vibrates faster, and so does the rod. If we place a wax-coated cylinder in contact with this rod and slowly rotate it while moving forward, the metal rod will carve a groove with undulations of varying depth, width, or spacing, depending on the frequency and intensity of the air’s vibration. The shape of the groove will mirror this, which is why we speak of analog sound. This recording system with a wax cylinder was invented by Thomas Edison in 1877. We thus have the analog recording of an air vibration. This microphone and recording system is called a transducer. The vibration of the air is transformed into another value—a more or less deeply carved groove. Vinyl records, which are back in fashion, work exactly on this principle. If you place the needle on the record and turn it by hand, without any electric amplification system, and bring your ear close, you’ll hear the reproduced sound as the air is set into vibration by the needle’s movement along the groove.

We’ve just described a microphone and a recorder. We’ve recorded the sound. But how do we play it back? Well, we harden the wax cylinder and use the exact same system. We rotate the wax cylinder, which sets the small metal rod in motion, which in turn moves the membrane, whose movement vibrates the surrounding air: the sound is reproduced, and we hear it. We now have a loudspeaker.

Sound is recorded or reproduced based on the nature of our presence

At first, this system was used to capture surrounding sound. Later, it was used to reproduce surrounding sound. Initially, the soft wax was capable of recording the sound around it, but if silence were chosen, it would only record silence. There was thus a voluntary choice—and this is why I speak of presence.

There was a voluntary choice: either to introduce sound, to have someone speak or play music, or to place our recorder in a location rich in vibrations, in sound waves. It is thus a choice of presence, and of technical apparatus, of course—but above all, a choice of a modality of presence in relation to sound that produced the fact that, at the moment of recording, we were choosing to capture the sound around us.

Then, when we choose to reproduce the sound, of course, if we’re in an environment where loud music is already playing, our sound reproduction will have little impact. It’s thus an inverse choice of presence: we place ourselves in a rather silent environment to activate the same device in its other function—sound reproduction. We choose, through our presence, to transmit sound waves, whereas initially, we chose, through our presence, to receive sound waves. It’s exactly the same process within us. When we immerse ourselves in an environment, we choose to receive the sound waves around us, and we can shift into another modality of presence to reproduce, through speech or music, the vibrations within us.

Our Choice of Vibrational Presence

Our ways of being present, of acting in the world, are always vibrational—ways that have an effect on waves, particularly sound waves. If we speak, for example, we set the air into vibration. But even in silence, our inner vibrational state inevitably impacts the outside. Even when a record is playing, waves from the surrounding environment will add to it, complementing it. The resonance of the room, for instance, or other small noises around. These won’t be recorded by the turntable because the record no longer has the softness of the wax cylinder. And that’s perhaps a shame, as the record could have gradually become a palimpsest enriched by all the situations in which it was played, the ways it was listened to.

But we, biological beings, are not as rigid as the microphone or the turntable. We are constantly in emission-reception. This is why our vibrations, even inner ones, influence the external world, and why the vibrations of the external world influence our inner vibrations. The palimpsest—the successive layers of vibrations—defines our presence in the field of sound waves.

We thus have the capacity to be, to echo more precisely with the world around us, to establish resonance—and in doing so, in return, to enrich and resonate the external world with our inner vibrations. It’s extremely subtle, a permanent dialectic between reception and emission. We experience this, for example, in a conversation that goes very well, where there’s mutual listening and mutual enrichment between the two interlocutors—as opposed to a conversation that goes poorly, where the two struggle to listen, to express themselves, to resonate with one another.

To conclude, I’d like to emphasize that our vibrations impact the external world, but also that we receive vibrations from the external world that we don’t consciously hear, yet which are present. Our vibrational presence can greatly impact the outside, and we can resonate very strongly with it, even in moments of silence. Vibrational resonances are just as active in silence as in sound. Let’s remember this to cultivate our quality of presence in the world—and thus, too, what we can bring to it, simply by choosing to be present or not.