Hi,
Tzitzitzitzitzitzi
Tzi Tzi Tzi Tzi Tzi Tzi
The continuous sound of cicadas invades my ears. It goes on and on. All day long. And even at night, when the full moon tricks the cicadas into thinking it’s daylight.
In Greek a cicada is called tzitzikas – an onomatopoeic noun that immediately activates my sound receptors. What else can a tzitzikas do, besides singing tzitzitzitzi, all day long? Like in the classic Aesop fable, the cicada sings and sings, enjoying every moment of the summer, while the ant works away to store up food for the winter. In the fable, when summer is over, the cicada is hungry and, having no food, begs the ant for some of his, but is denied.
Tzi Tzi Tzi Tzi Tzi
Tzi
Tzi
Silence. The cicadas have stopped. I also stop and look up from my screen. Are the cicadas taking a break from their exhausting summer life? Are they reminding me that the summer is coming to an end?
If I were to stick to the Aesop classic, I would feel OK about working away like an ant because that means that I can survive the winter. But maybe the cicadas are telling me that I should go out and play instead? Maybe there’s a better way to store up the summer energy than working away like an ant?
I must confess that I refused to repeat the Aesop fable to Lorenzo, my year-and-a-half-old son. You may remember from my previous stories how much I believe play is important, especially for kids. So I just don’t like the idea of telling Lorenzo about a fable that ends with this moral lesson: “There’s a time for work and a time for play.”
The first time Lorenzo heard the cicadas singing out loud, he looked up at me quite puzzled. So I walked him to a tree and explained there was a bug that sings in summer. He must have been intrigued because he stuck around. When we came really close to the tree, the cicada shut up. So I told Lorenzo to stand still until the cicada got used to our presence.
And slowly, it started again: tzi tzi tzi tzi.
Lorenzo joined in: tzitzitzi.
This is how he now refers to cicadas – more than half-way through the Greek word.
Children can listen!
Children listen fully, says Gordon Hempton, a sound recordist, in a podcast my colleague Jacco Prantl and writer Zeno Siemens-Brega put together.
Hempton argues that children have the capacity to listen fully because they have not yet learned what is “important”. Once in school, teachers tell us that they are important, that we have to listen to them, and to be quiet so we can give them our full attention. So we impair our listening, shutting out things our teachers tell us “aren’t important” so that we can control what comes in to extract the information others want us to know, he says.
But real listening comes without the filters we apply as we grow older.
Hempton suggests two ways to be able to listen to life around us: the sound of cars, the frogs at night, the wind in the trees, the birds on the balcony.
You can simply hold a microphone and plug it in, and listen in silence to an amplified version of your surroundings. Or you can find a young child who has not gone to school yet, and go on a night walk. Tell them where to go, and guess together, in silence, what you’re hearing.
Hempton put in words something I’ve been experiencing as a mother. Lorenzo is only starting to use words now, but mainly he listens and refers to things by the sound they make. Vroom-vroom is the car. Tactac is the sound of beach tennis. Tzitzitzi is a cicada, but also a mosquito or a fly if the sound is accompanied by a hand waving through the air.
Because of him, I listen more.
Today, the gift of sound!
Today, we give you the gift of sound here at The Correspondent. We’ve launched an audio app, which you can download here. There’s soon going to be a podcast, and we’re also giving a new life to stories we’ve written throughout our first year, and making it easier for you to get insights from our journalism without having to sit down and read it – just listen!
One of the first audio stories published is my own about abortion legalisation in Argentina, read out by Jumoké Fashola. She’s also a jazz singer, and her voice is a treat to the ear.
You can listen here, and browse our library.
If you’re a member, click here to make sure you’ve renewed your membership so you can keep "hearing" from us. (And many thanks if you’ve already done so!)
If you’re not a member but like these newsletters and are a fan of audio, please consider joining. You can do so here, and you can choose what you pay.
If you can’t hear our audio, don’t worry. Daniel, a deaf father, brought this up under our announcement. There will be transcripts or written versions of the audio we post, so that you can all access these words in one way or another.
Thank you for listening!
Until next week,
Irene
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