We walk steadily uphill together. The peak is only 2km from the car park, but we have 530m to climb, which takes us 50 minutes. Although the sun is bright, the breeze is fresh and cool, streaming off the Atlantic, to our west. Our body heat – generated step-by-step, stride-by-stride, as we slowly rise, higher and higher, along the narrow quartz-strewn path up the mountain – soaks us in sweat. I can feel the water drips running down my face, back and legs. I lick the salty residue from my lips.
Errigal is fully exposed to the weather. There is no shelter, no hiding place. My ears fill with the steady pulse of the wind. A small passing cloud coats us, briefly, with snowflakes, cooling and cleansing our faces as they melt on impact. We reach the summit: we sit, we drink water and the pace of our heartbeats starts to slow. We admire the views, which are spectacular. This is a great place for a good conversation, but when we stop talking there are no other human sounds audible, only the gentle hum of nature.
Descending is easier on the lungs but harder on the knee and ankle joints, our leg muscles no longer stretching out to propel us upwards, but tightening and tensing, holding us back from slipping on loose rock, keeping us balanced as we drop back towards the moorland below. The wind becomes gentler – now a modest breeze that tickles the skin – and quieter too. We can hear the call of birds, an occasional car in the distance, and the steady trickle of brackish water in a mountain stream, that makes its way down the slope, skipping over the rocks, alongside us.
Two days later, now alone, I walk across the dunes to the beach. The wind wraps around me, in my ears and eyes and hair, surrounding me with the sound of the sea, exfoliating my skin with minute particles of salt and sand, flavouring my journey. The grass is spongy and springy: no need for walking boots here, light trainers will suffice. The dunes rise and fall, like giant molehills, but the walking is fast and easy. Where the path is sheltered from the wind the sun warms my face – the air temperature today is higher than average for mid-May – confirming that Spring has arrived. Earlier this morning I heard a cuckoo.
The beach curves around the coastline. To reach the far end will take me 25 minutes at a brisk pace. I take off my shoes and feel the fine sand, firm and moist on the soles of my feet, and I hear the cries of gulls above the rushing of the air, and the rhythmic patterns of the waves blown repeatedly against the shore. If I were to look closely, I would see flecks of white everywhere – sheep in the fields, shells in the sand, birds on the wing, foam on the waves and clouds in the heavens – and I could enjoy the endlessly variegated blues of the sea and sky, but my senses are already overwhelmed by the white noise of the wind and ocean in my ears. My head is full of their vast sound.
Prompted by powerful sensations, my mind engages, searching its archives, making connections with previously stored experience. It replays the lyrics of a song:
I am drawn to the western shore
Where the light moves bright upon the tide
To the lullaby and the ceaseless roar
And the songs that never die
My memory links the words, the tune, the image of a shell on the cover of the compact disc, with this moment, this place, this feeling. For me, this is the western shore that will always be the subject of the song, this is the beach where the light will dance on the surface of the sea, these will be the connections that will never die.
It is time to swim; or, rather, to confront the waves as they surge relentlessly from the north-west, knocking me over, plunging me under, my eyes stung, my mouth, ears and nose cleansed by brine. My skin is everywhere taut and alert, stimulated by the force and temperature of the water, strong and cold – very cold – wrapping me, rolling me, pushing me down and lifting me up. When I manage to empty my ears of saline, and lift my head into the sunshine, once again I feel the wind across my face and hear the sea. The horizon line recedes into the silence of empty space, but the tidal flow advances incessantly in full voice.
The ceaseless roar of the wind and the lullaby of the ocean will stay with me forever, but the song does not remain the same. Amid the repetitions – wave after wave, gust after gust – are countless minor variations: subtle changes according to the direction of the jet stream and water currents, the gravitational pull of the moon through its cycle and the rotation of the seasons: variations of tone, of pace, of rhythm, of melody, each asserting its unique individuality through minor differences, while also reinforcing their shared characteristics within the soundscape. The music of the beach – repeated patterns, marginal deviations – is unlike anything else, but it mostly reminds me of Philip Glass: no, not the 1975 opera, but the piano études.
A few weeks previously I had attended a musical event at Tate Modern, during which an orchestra of professional musicians was joined by a choir and a band both comprised of people who are or have recently been homeless, to perform together. My friend who works at With One Voice – the international arts and homelessness movement, which organised the event – had encouraged me to come and listen. They played Gavin Bryars’s Jesus’ blood never failed me yet continuously, from 8pm in the evening until 8am the next morning. The sung lyric – recorded by an unknown homeless man, in 1971 – lasts for about 25 seconds, which means that the tape loop plays approximately 1728 times during the performance, with the instrumental and vocal accompaniments providing a series of musical variations around this repetitious central theme.
It was a truly immersive experience. Initially my attention was centred on the recorded song but was then diverted by the changing combinations of instruments and voices performing live. After some time, as these became familiar, predictable, anticipated, my attention shifted to the subtle changes – intentional or mistaken – introduced by the performers. Then, as both theme and variations became routine, the experience became more hypnotic: the music was everywhere in the room, but it was also nowhere special; it enveloped me, filling my head, but it allowed my mind to wander, to search for connected memories, to bring to the surface of my consciousness thoughts and feelings that otherwise might remain submerged beneath the routine busyness of my conscious life.
After three hours, my physical reception of the music had transformed my sense of place and time: I was suspended in a moment in which all regular distractions were absent. The experience – swimming attentively in sounds – was mesmeric and visceral. In today’s world, music is ever-present but always in the background, lulling us without really bothering us, providing comfort but never touching us. Listening to recorded music is a very different experience, a second-order pleasure. To feel the music on our skin we need to be in the presence of the performers.
Our memories work mysteriously, unpredictably, unreliably, surprisingly, suggestively. These profoundly physical experiences – climbing the steep mountain path, splashing in the cold, cold sea, and listening to the meditative music performance – reminded me of an essay by Montaigne, On the art of conference, which is in Book III of the collected Essays. I did not have either of my printed copies to hand, so I re-read it on an electronic device, which feels different and slightly inauthentic. But the quality of the writing was as I remembered. Montaigne writes:
The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose, I should sooner, I think consent to lose my sight than my hearing or speech.
I was struck by this remark, since I am sure that most of us would, if we were now compelled to choose, consent to lose our hearing or speech than our sight. Montaigne makes an unexpected choice, but – as always – he has cogent reasons. He values conversation above the reading of books because it engages us more fully. “When anyone contradicts me”, he writes, “he raises my attention, not my anger.” And later, “’tis a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and approve of all we say.”
Spending time in the company of others, who question, challenge, counter-suggest, oppose, examine, cajole and tease us, is a great sensory pleasure as well as the cornerstone of friendship. It is not just their company – their being-with-us – that matters, but their constructive resistance – their being-against-us – that counts. We need our friends to be present, to hear their voices immediately in our ears, not mediated by some form of information communication technology; we need to feel them on our skin, to be touched in our hearts. Their engagement with us is both a comfort and a stimulant: they remind us who we are and that we are alive.
These are the moments that feed our memories, creating reserves of happiness and goodwill upon which we can draw when we are alone, or separated, or simply reliant on mediated communication using electronic messages. Like letter writing in an earlier age, the use of text and email today is a valuable lifeline, keeping us connected to our network of friendships; but it is always only a poor substitute for being with them in the same room. Nothing can recreate the pleasure of the immediate, real, physical presence of a friend. Montaigne is right to say that conversation is sweet; a glass or two of wine shared during conversation makes it sweeter still.
I chose not to stay at Tate Modern for the full twelve-hour performance. After three hours I made my way home, tired from the effort of paying close attention, but rewarded and renewed by the physical and psychological demands of the task. It is not a great piece of music; not as good as Philip Glass for sure. Even so, the value of the experience – the lesson in listening – was evident. The next morning, I woke early, walked back to the gallery and heard the final hour. When the orchestra and choir finally stopped, their marathon performance over, the silence was immense. I will remember this event for a long time, not because of the brilliance of the playing, nor the aesthetic qualities of what was played, but because of the message – creating one musical voice from the elite and the excluded – and because the telling of this story was itself an exercise in effort and endurance. I was there and I was fully absorbed by my experience of others making music.
Listening, done well, is hard work, like walking up a mountain, like plunging into the ocean. It makes demands on our reserves of energy as well as on the acuity of our senses. We do not learn much from chatter, but we can learn to listen better and to sense the depths that lie beneath the surface of language. We can train ourselves to hear more. In the immediacy of the company of friends we develop the ability to hear the subtle variations of unpredictability as well as the regular repetitions of consistency; it becomes possible for us to be robust as well as to be gentle; we are able to ascend to greater heights of shared understanding and respect. Friendship is a labour of the senses and of the memory.