I woke up Tuesday morning in an inordinately good mood. The alarm wasn’t due to go off for an hour, I’d slept badly, and my right ankle was hurting, but my outlook was rosy. The sound that had awakened me was my upstairs cat, Augustus, purring next to my pillow. How could I not love that guy?
Because the weather has warmed up (90F on Monday), the windows of my house are now open pretty much 24-7, and Monday night I’d fallen asleep to the sound of the neighbor’s cows, shuffling around in tall spring grass and munching it down to size. A lovely lullaby.
Where am I going with this? Welp, I recently came across a study on how our mode of waking affects blood pressure spikes, which are a factor in stroke prediction. One of my siblings had a stroke at age 57 while out on his morning jog (yes, he was religious about taking his BP meds, and as a nutritionist, extremely careful about his diet). I’m thus aware that blood pressure generally does spike first thing in the day. Up we shall get, and our BP rises sharply when we do.
But an increasing body of medical evidence adds a footnote: If you are awakened by a sudden, jarring sound, your fight or flight response is triggered, and your morning BP spike will be higher than ever. Your whole day could be more anxious and less healthy because of that fire truck siren that wailed you to consciousness. From a cave-dwelling perspective, that makes perfect sense to me.
Authors are encouraged to include sound as a part of any scene setting, because it’s a simple way to foreshadow action or signal conflict. A piano out of tune in the upper register, a footman bellowing a naughty drinking song, a violin drilling minor scales… readers pick up on the potential cues in all of those aural details even if they don’t immediately think, “That out of tune piano means Aunt Sniffy will refuse to grant our struggling heroine a loan!”
As Wellington’s army advanced across Spain, his night pickets were always careful to keep some grazing horses nearby. The soldiers on guard duty could not hear French snipers skulking in the undergrowth, but the horses could. The soldiers knew that if the horses stopped nom-nomming at the grass, that was a change in the soundscape even a sleepy private would notice.
All of this has me thinking about how conscientious some people are about managing their soundscapes. From noise-canceling headphones, to commuting playlists, to custom ring tones, and workout shuffles, some of us are apparently aware that what we hear can have a significant affect on our health and outlook.
I don’t have playlists and so forth, and realize that in not taking a hand in what I hear, I’m bypassing what could be a useful tool in protecting my health and my good spirits. So this is me, looking for a birdsong morning alarm, and some peaceful tunes to sign off 
with as I go through my nighty-nighty routine.
What parts of your soundscape do you manage? Are there any sounds in particular that drive you ’round the bend? (Looking at you, neighbor guys, and your Saturday morning lawn-mowing festivals.)
The time approaches when I need to make my ARC list for A Gentleman in Search of Wife. If you’ve recently sent me your email addie, I still have it. If you’d like an early peek at Lord Julian’s next adventure, email me at [email protected] (quietly, of course).
Also, the first print edition (and probably the cheapest) of Gent in Search is available on Amazon. More print links to follow shortly!
I manage my soundscape as well as possible while living around other people. Since my parents have passed, I have turned off the ringer on my bedroom phone because nothing else can be that much of an emergency, and too many still-working folks start their days before I want to. Some days it is the alarm that jars me awake (as it must because I discovered that unless it’s jarring, I can easily sleep through as much as an hour of sound) and other days I awaken before the alarm. Since I go to bed about 9 hours before my alarm is set for, I’m usually not in a deep sleep when it goes off so it’s actually not too jarring, but more surprising. I prefer a very quiet world. In fact, when my back yard neighbor is having a party, it is physically painful to me to hear their music. I bought some noise-cancelling headphones for those occasions but they don’t really cancel the sounds I want. Unfortunately, my audiologist told me they can’t. Some days, a desert island sounds like heaven to me (maybe “sound” isn’t the right word here?).
I like quiet in the morning as I spend 8 plus hours each day on the phone.
My corgis are older and they go out, eat and nap. They do understand the 8:30 log in time and rush to the office!
I listen to audio books or music when I drive. I watch the first 15 minutes of the local and national news- the rest can be a bit overwhelming.
I am looking forward to having my coffee on the back deck – listening to the birds and the neighborhood noise- the lawn mowers, kids and dogs barking— helps me transition to Spring!
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My husband and I were just discussing the escalating levels of noise (and attendant stress) this past weekend. We had been in central Costa Rica, hiking in the rain and cloud forests, where the sounds are muted and almost all “natural:” birds, monkeys, waterfalls, other visitors. Our lodgings were quiet, with little ambient light at night. Being back at the airport for the return journey was awful. The building is very resonant as well as busy with hundreds of travelers. Add to that the incessant announcements that continued on the plane along with the engine roar, babies and so on. Even the performance of a Strauss tone poem we heard last night reached 101 db, averaging around 70 db. The worst herabouts? Leaf blowers, mowers, motorcycles. There’s no end to it.
Chainsaws drive me around the bend. I also cringe at the sound of gravel trucks emptying, especially the larger road crush. On the other hand, I find jet engines soothing. I grew up 15 miles or so from a Naval Air Station during the 60’s, likewise the mill whistles and fog horns of my childhood were part of my day.
We were parrot parents. They can be obnoxiously loud, as can our current mini-schnauzer. The schnauzer is easier to reason with.
The stuff sold as “relaxing” sort of drives me bugs. I find myself counting chords… a 3rd, a 4th, why a seventh here? And there often is no plot that I can discern. Our alarm is the bell on the coffee pot, if we haven’t already come around with the gurgling.
I had a couple of mixed tapes when the kids were small for the witching hour/s… Irish drinking songs, massed choirs singing Ode to Joy and others, a little Hendrix, polkas. It works.
I have a ridiculous system to tailor my sound for sleep. I have this pillow on which I listen to specific music/sounds of exact frequencies to reset my nervous system overnight. Originally prescribed for my autistic child by their OT, when they rejected it completely, I tried it and began sleeping consistently after a lifetime of insomnia. But, I can’t sleep with the ambient noise so I also wear earplugs. The pillow works eventhough I can barely hear it because of the vibration through the skull. It does feel silly to play music I am not listening to, but since it works I am not fixing what is not broke.
I also like to just wear earplugs sometimes during the day as I am doing stuff in the house because the leafblowers and lawnmowers and sirens etc. can take a toll. The book “Your Brain on Art” makes a good argument to consume more of what is beautiful to you, so I have started to listen to soothing music on earphones sometimes too. I’m going to start noting my mood at start and after listening for a while and see if I can tell if it has an impact. Being jarred awake is awful, I’m glad there is a scientific reason for my resultant bad mood.
Fortunately I rarely have to deal with alarm clocks anymore since we are both (mostly) retired. My husband and I both grew up in the city with the sounds of the overhead trains going by at all hours, so the peace and quiet where we now live in the “exurbs” is just miraculous! Of course, when we are sitting by the pool after a refreshing swim, enjoying the woods and the yard and a neighbor fires up their mower, it’s time to abandon all hope and move indoors. We usually don’t have much noise going on in the house, however, when I cook, I like to have my little Bose speaker play my “cooking playlist.” Family knows that when the music is playing, and Mama is dancing around in the kitchen, a good meal can’t be far behind! Stay safe. Stay well everyone!
I let audiobooks of favorite books I’ve already read & loved read me to sleep. Or back to sleep should anything wake me in the night. I rarely need an alarm as the increasing roar of the interstate a mile away wakes me around dawn. If I have to have one, the echo device can play various nature sounds at slowly increasing volume until I wake. I’m partial to ocean waves.
And on those days we are not accustomed to waking at a given time (like when we “spring forward”) there are more medical crises!
A bird song alarm is a great idea!
I listen daily to a classical music programme on radio unless I prefer eg a Bach CD over their programming. The patterning of sound and my emotional responses keep me focussed.
I so agree about gentle morning wake-ups! One of the real pluses to my smart phone (I fought and fought against getting one for oh so long…) is the alarm. There are huge choices of what to wake up to and I picked something called Butterfly Trails (this is a Google Pixel). Anyway it is a gentle tinkle and I can hear it at a very low volume which will gradually get louder after a bit. It does not wake my husband up unless he is about to wake up anyway. It has made a huge difference in my life. My husband has a “light” alarm which works in winter when it is really dark, and uses bird song in the summer. This time of year we have natural bird song, so that does not work so well.
I have always liked going to sleep to Ian and Sylvia. I have some of their songs on an MP3 player and use that during air travel. Our daughter liked to fall asleep to Chopin’s piano music when she was a babe. I rarely need music to fall asleep anymore which is nice.
As far as loud anything, I hate it! I always have a couple of pair of earplugs in my purse and I find I pop them in for movies, loud music, outdoor machines of all kinds. I have to use them when in the room with the grand piano too, or else exit and get a door between us…
At my age though I guess I should be very grateful that my hearing is still working so well!
I used to have the usual nasty alarm, and I would jolt awake and slam the clock or even throw it across the room. But back in 2015 I discovered an iPhone app called SleepCycle and have used it ever since. Instead of setting a fixed wake-up time, I set it to wake me within a half-hour window. It monitors my sleep, and if I’m sleeping lightly or already starting to stir at the beginning of the wake-up window, it will let me continue. But if I’m on a trajectory toward deeper sleep it will awaken me at the beginning of the window. The sound I chose is called “warm breeze,” and it starts out so softly that I can hardly hear it, then gets slowly louder. It takes about ten minutes for it to reach full volume. I wake up very quickly and gently, and don’t fight to go back to sleep like I did with the harsh alarms.
When I lie down to go to sleep, I play a short playlist of my four favorite Chopin nocturnes. I’ve been using that for several years, and now associate that music with sleep. I was recently diagnosed (age age 70!) with ADHD, and I find that if I point my focus from my noisy brain to the music, my breathing immediately slows and I’m much more inclined to drift off to sleep.
leaf blowers! they are the worst. but, we also have mockingbirds around and i love hearing them exercising their repertoire. i put music on when i want to focus or get my energy up, but i otherwise don’t do much to terraform the noise territory i inhabit.
I leave my windows open, for the most part. So when the outside is too intrusive, I just close the window closest to the sound. My tolerance level is very dependent on how I’m feeling.
Sounds that are staccato and irregular, such as barking dogs, are quite bothersome, especially at night, since those sounds cause bright bursts of light behind closed eyes. Besides closing the window, I have to turn a low light on to counteract this effect.
(I’ve always loved changing up ringtones and text notification sounds, and have a decade’s worth of sound files and folders…)
I am pleased to let you know that my 2 pups actually obey the command “no bark after dark”
Neighbors’ dogs, I have no say.
🙂
I used to have awful loud alarms or i would sleep right through them. I have been aware for a long time of that startle ruining my morning at the very least. Now I own a smart watch which monitors many of my aging health challenges. In addition it vibrates my wrist rather gently at alarm time before any sound even begins, who knew?
My main startle complaint is my dogs “sounding the alarm” and leaping to action. I describe it thus with tongue firmly in cheek. If I figure out how to get them to be more dignified I will certainly post it! LOL
I never gave too much time thinking about what wakes me in the morning but your writing about BP and health habits is so inspiring I have begun thinking about sounds and intrusion into my life and day! Thanks for that additional help to make life a little brighter, joyful and peacful.
Besides writing grand books that take you on a fantasy trip your health advice is great. Thanks
Our daughter had this alarm clock for years. https://www.hammacher.com/product/ladys-speaking-butler-alarm-clock Stephen Fry voiced Jeeves with a gentle, witty message every morning. Now if it could have produced a steaming cup of tea.