What we can hear, or choose to hear, or prefer not to hear, form a theme in the book from which the quotation about Adam comes. It is Our Sound Is Our Wound: Contemplative Listening in a Noisy World by Lucy Winkett (Continuum, £9.99). The Archbishop of Canterbury has named it as his Lent book. Lent starts on Wednesday and many Christians like to use a book to focus their thoughts in the six weeks before Easter.
Lucy Winkett, a singer by training, is Precentor of St Paul’s Cathedral, responsible for its music and liturgy. She also, she tells us, has tinnitus, which means for her that she hears a high-pitched whistle.
The sounds of the modern city match, she thinks, the dominant modern feelings of anxiety and fear ”“ principally fear of death. In opposition, she presents the liberating forces of justice and beauty. Beauty, she believes, leads to justice, partly by bringing us out of ourselves.
I not only have tinnitus, but apparently am tone deaf also since I was not able to understand this piece even after reading it twice.