For my sound walk, I chose to listen to the noises and observe the area around me at Grand Central Terminal. I commute on the Metronorth train every day, and thus always walk through this location - except, I always have earbuds on and am always listening to music. I generally don’t pay much attention to people (unless they have a dog) and stay focused on getting to my destination while enjoying my music. Before starting this assignment, I tried to imagine what I hear when I’m in Grand Central and I couldn’t think of what exactly the space sounds like, besides some sort of jumble of noises.
It is now 7PM at Grand Central. It’s fairly crowded and I see someone rushing to get somewhere almost everywhere I turn. While the majority of people are running to their track to catch their train, I wonder if some people have somewhere drastic to be. I hear a group of tourists’ dialogues and they seem to be speaking Korean. They’re trying to figure out where or how to go somewhere. It makes me remember the days when I first started taking the subway in high school; I was perplexed at how a person could know exactly where they were going with this confusing, colorful map. It made no sense to me for months upon months, but now I’m an expert. I hear the noise coming from an announcement. Track change. There are conversations going on everywhere. While I can't hear everyone's exact dialogues, I hear everyone's voices as a whole as I listen to the noises. While one can see that Grand Central is always busy place around peak hour, you can even hear how busy it is. I listen in on a couple conversations and just observe. In one minute: A couple is debating on what food they should get. It's a funny debate, they both seem starving and cranky, but can't choose where to eat. A baby is crying loudly, but stops as soon as her dad gives her/him a toy. A man is playing his music probably way too loud as I can hear his music through his headphones as he walks past me.
A couple minutes later, I hear an announcement that states not to sit on the stairs of Grand Central. But I see about 6, now 7 people sitting on the stairs of Grand Central in front of the Apple Store. I've heard that announcement a few times before, but have never seen people not sitting on the stairs – maybe only when it’s really late at night. I've realized I'm pretty oblivious to the noises around me on my every day commutes, however, interestingly, I feel like I can hear a new noise after a new noise, even though I'm in the same spot, next to the center clock. I feel like Grand Central perfectly demonstrates how NYC people are always on the go or in a hurry, which is how I feel during the week. It was pleasing to calmly listen and simply observe what’s really going on with other real people, in spite of usually rushing from place to place.
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