The other day I saw a student walking past me, listening to an ipod, while reading a book.
Impressed as I was by his multi-tasking I felt a bit sad that he couldn't appreciate the environment without cocooning himself in another worlds.
It comes back to the soundscape/soundwalk idea - how can we become aware of our surroundings (even if it is only a dingy campus path) if we are visually entranced by a book, and aurally by music?
Perhaps this partly explains our increasingly weak relationship with landscape....
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I think it depends on your definition of 'aware'.
While really looking at one's surroundings you can see the beauty and stillness of the landscape - the spaces in thought and the true beauty that surrounds - isn't the perceived beauty really just being present in the moment? Are you actually observing the beauty of the tree or of the architecture, or are you merely feeling the stillness in the mind and observing something pleasant to the eye? In which case we come back to the eye of the beholder, don't we?
While I tend my garden, paint, read, or listen to music - if it is without thought and I am present - just experiencing those moments as a means of meditative focus - it isn't really a cocoon, is it?
If I am autonomously walking, putting one foot in front of another out of years' experience of doing so - and listening to a Gregorian chant while reading a particularly insightful passage from a book I am fond of - does that necessarily take away from my appreciation of my surroundings - or am I just present in another place?
I think evolution and technology have actually added to our 'landscape' - I am not worried and on-the-look-out for a roaming carnivore and can now experience the soothing sounds outside the monastery without actually being there - something our human predecessors did not have the luxury of doing - and therefore created those environments via physical landscaping, physical art, etc.
Just a thought.
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