In hood and headphones

Last spring, I had the chance to participate in a Writers at Work program at the Hay Festival, a large book festival in Wales. It was an amazing experience: for ten days, I was one of ten early-career writers treated to a full schedule of private masterclasses and events with some of the biggest names in literature. In addition, we had our own private workshop tent in the middle of the festival site, where we could sit and work on our own writing. But this was tricky. I usually write alone in an empty house. A private tent is still a tent, and through the canvas walls, the festival site was loud and crowded. I found it difficult to focus, so I started wearing headphones to create a private quiet for myself within the space. My niece, who is on the autism spectrum, often wears a similar pair at family meals. They help her sit with us without getting overwhelmed by our boisterous conversations. I found mine helped enormously with my ability to focus.

‘The static my senses make’

Over the summer, I acquired a new pair of headphones, these ones with deliberately noise-canceling technology. I used them while flying and found it amazing to experience the difference. The constant airplane thrum was hushed, and I arrived feeling so much calmer.

I wear them now at my desk, and even in a quiet house, the difference is amazing. The walls of my terraced house are thin, and the neighbourhood noises come in, but my new headphones help me focus regardless of what is happening on the street outside my window. They feel like a gift for a writer who works in a city.

One hundred years ago, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Wenn es nur einmal so ganz stille wäre about his own struggles to focus.

“If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbour’s laughter,
and the static my senses make
– if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake –
then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.”
(Translated by Barrows and Macy.)

This one vast thought

We could talk together, Rilke and I, about how difficult focus can be in a city. Berlin, Paris, Cardiff, Ottawa, anywhere: all cities hum and distract. In this poem the you is God, and I hear Rilke longing to approach the divine – to think his one vast thought – and yet he lacks stillness. So, maybe I’ll invite St. Augustine to sit with us as well, to remind us we are all restless until our hearts find rest in God. And Meister Eckhart, another German writer, will teach us to wear the knowledge of God as a hood that brings comfort. He in his hood, me in my headphones. We’ll sit together across the years and talk about our hope in the presence of God. Somewhere in the background, the psalmist will sing good words that ring true. Be still and know that I am God.