Every summer, time slipped by in a haze. As the season evaporated under the sun’s dry gaze, quick like tears on midday pavement, the afternoon hours would grow deep and long. At summer’s end we would mourn its swiftness but during it we were routinely fatigued by its painful luminosity.
On summer afternoons I would head into the garden, air ablaze with cicada choruses. Ma would insist on me being outside to pass the time, instead of inside, always seconds away from scribbling my crayons onto a non-crayon-safe surface. I would head outside with a teaspoonful of sugar. Ma would insist that the ants were waiting. Waiting for me and the crystallised sweetness. Having been instructed to take the spoon into the garden at the furthest point from the house itself, I would carefully dust the mound of fine crystals onto a retaining wall and plop down beside it. Cross-legged and at eye-level with the glittering mound.
And wait.
And wait.
I was waiting for the quiver of the first ant that would happen upon its treasures. I imagined a kind of antenna-dance that it would perform upon the discovery that would sound like miniature maracas. The percussive siren that would summon a hundred ants. But this waiting took more time than a six-year-old wished for and more patience than a child could muster.
While I waited, I would begin to distract myself by looking around the shaded corner of the garden. The lime tree to my right, with its beautifully moss-coloured leaves, thick and shiny with a waxed texture, was not an option. It was deceptively full of stink bugs. To my left, a young apple tree was draped in fruit that was sour with a brightness that was not worth enduring. Locking eyes with the sugar heap, I decided that doing something useful was the only way to trick the passage of time and hasten my easy boredom by settling into the rhythm of ant time. I snatched a nearby stick and started digging a hole beside me, softly scraping at the topsoil and yellow-ish brown clay that lay beneath. I was wary of not driving away the ants with noisy rhythms, wishing my ears would pick up their quivers. While waiting, I continued to dig, assuming that treasures were waiting to be pried out from the soil beneath my feet.
A six-year-old excavating, conserving, discovering, hoping to find something;a bone, a sherd, some kind of something that resembled part of an object that was once living or fabricated by a past living being. I fancied myself an archaeologist.
The thing is, young Vy, I did end up being an archaeologist.
I started out as an archaeologist, going into the field with my WHS trowel, joining a team of scientists and excavators with tents pitched and UV SteriPens at the ready. We carefully peeled through layers of time, shedding the Earth's epidermis to retrieve remnants of what may have been left behind. Excavation was a process of unearthing, of listening in a way that had nothing to do with sound but everything to do with presence.
Soon, my excavations morphed.
Instead of sifting through soil I contemplated excavating sound.
I turned my attention to what could not be seen — waves, vibrations, resonances, unrecorded action, history written not in objects but in echoes. If we were to contemplate life in a holistic manner, we could start by considering all the senses beyond what can be held and seen. Uncovering and conserving fragments of past material culture was fascinating, but it reduced what we inherited from past cultures and of our evolution as a way of living that was silent. My ears were unfurling at a time where other researchers were beginning to investigate acoustics and sound as a way to listen backwards.
Now, I listen to soundscapes. I set up recorders deep in forests, under the soil, attached to living organisms and archaeological sites.
To sit quietly, ears pricked to the ground, listening not just for the movement of ants but now for something more connected — the hum of the earth beneath me. It’s less serene than you would expect. Nature is noisy. I don’t just mean the thunderous rolls of tempests or seismic convulsions. Like the presumed silence of past lives, ecology is constantly in movement and therefore, constantly in noise. From the billions of organisms trembling beneath our feet to the echoes of other species calling through the trees, we can stand still while engulfed in constant sonic motion. Even in modern spaces or forgotten caves, these spaces resonate. It would be years before I understood that listening was not just a passive act but a way of being in the world. You, little Vy, already knew it then, in a way I had to rediscover.
You thought you were just watching ants, excited to see them dance for sugar. In truth, that was your hope, but you were learning the language of the ground. Exercising patience in a manner that maturing asserts is a wasteful practice.
One twiddle… two twiddles… then three…
The first ant arrived.
Miniature and deep red in hue, stamping in joy. This single ant was rather cute, I thought.
One by one, they came to the sugar mound, twirling their antennae in a delicate, jittering rhythm. A signal of discovery. Imagine what a revelation it must be to happen upon a mountain of pure glucose while on a walk. A fortune so great, so sudden, that the only response is to move; urgent, ecstatic, chemically electric.
The eventual raucous festivities of a thousand subterranean insects were so minuscule to my infant ears that I assumed them silent. But the world is never truly quiet. Their ruckus, if there was one, was swallowed by the weight of the afternoon,the ceaseless, arduous rhythm of cicadas, their vibrations pressing into the air like heat itself. Everything buzzed, hummed, clicked in an ancient and necessary acoustic tessellation.
As a single ant turned into a line which turned into several queues, I watched as each ant brushed antennas with incoming harvesters. Were the ants dancing? Do ants drum the floor with their six legs and their antennae, the way we sometimes do in celebration? Did they drum the earth around them, beneath them, and above them? I imagined that they did but I still couldn’t hear it.
One twiddle… two twiddles… then three…
A signal sent. A message received
And the procession continued.
This is how communication begins. Before words, before voices, there was rhythm. There was the tap of a foot, the drum of a palm against hollow wood, the vibration of bodies in motion. It was never just about making sound, but about transmission.
Years later, amongst dense greenery, I was crouching near the ground as you once did. However, I was without the bait of sugar. I was carefully adhering a contact microphone to the base of an oak tree. Having found a procession of ants, I placed a microphone near them and very slowly snuck one beneath them. Trying to capture their stamps, their drumming. Again, I waited.
We humans drum. We drum to make music. We use rhythm to signal, to send messages, to walk, to talk, to wax lyrical. But we are not the only creatures who do so.
Our closest cousins, chimpanzees, drum not just to be playfully loud or to display strength to their companions, but to be heard across distance, across time. Their signals carry beyond their own bodies, reverberating through the valley, up to one mile through dense jungle. With a palm or foot slamming against a tree trunk, the ricochet of sound traveling through dense air, bursts of percussive patterns can be repeated and received.
Their drumming and vocalisations are more than noise; it is conversation, memory, mapping. In the dense forest, where vision is obscured, sound becomes the bridge between individuals and groups. Perhaps this is where our own evolution of listening begins; long before language as we know it. Even now, in the way we tap our fingers absentmindedly on a table to the radio, in the way we march in step, in the way we are drawn to move to music, we are bipedally moving in time. These percussive signals traveled through the landscape, rippling outward, marking territory, summoning, warning, remembering.
And so, here I am listening with eyes closed, adjusting the dial on my recording device to make sure everything is clear. Very slowly, tiny taps came into focus. Rapid bursts of feet; silvery and swift. The ants were really marching one by one, a continuous procession of scutters. Six feet drumming after six feet drumming. I continue to listen, thinking back to that teaspoon of summer sugar.
It was a kind of childlike meditation, though I didn’t have the words for it then. In primary school, we had a monk, a teacher of discipline and practice, come and visit for the Buddhist students to access. Once a week, we would sit cross-legged, hands resting lightly on our knees and try to clear our minds. The others took it seriously — soft breaths, eyes closed, faces serene. I was definitely nailing it. I fell asleep every time.
There was something about those afternoons in the garden that felt closer to meditation than anything we did in that carpeted classroom, watching ants carry away sugar, grain by grain, into the slow dissolving of time itself.
But today it is a winter morning. The sky had a different glare during this season, one that was grey and on the verge of weeping. I sat by the brick wall in the courtyard and poured a small mound of fine grains onto its top. Each platinum grain tumbled, slid, rattled against each other; tiny collisions and tiny morsels. And, I think of you, of how you sat there for hours, waiting, watching, digging. Listening without knowing you were listening.
So here we are, you and I. A loop folded in on itself.
Tell me, little Vy, what else did you hear?