Quiet Company
Short films with the sound turned up
Australian bush, coast, kitchen and dog. Eight seconds each. No music, no talking, and nothing at all asked of you.
Turn your sound on. That is the whole thing.
Free 30 minute piece for your inbox ↓Start here
Charlie
Brushing him out
He gives me about four strokes before he gives up standing. Then it is just the sound of the brush and his breathing getting slower, and mine doing the same thing without being asked. I do not think he is the one being looked after in this.
Watch on YouTubeThe bush
One long piece
It comes off in sheets, like the tree keeps a spare paper copy of itself on the outside. The trick is to go slowly enough that it does not tear, which means going slower than feels sensible, which is most tricks really. Take the loose stuff only. The tree is still using the rest.
Watch on YouTubeThe bush
The first drops on iron
You hear it before you feel it. Three or four single hits on the roof, spaced far apart, and you stop whatever you are doing. Then the gap closes and it is just rain, and the whole house gets about ten degrees calmer. Nobody has ever explained to me why this works and I have stopped asking.
Watch on YouTubeThe kitchen
Lemon myrtle, torn not cut
Tear it rather than chop it. You get more of the smell and it takes longer, and both of those are the point. It is one of the few things I do where the smell arrives before I have decided anything, which is usually a sign I have slowed down enough to notice it. Into the pot, or into hot water, or into nothing at all.
Watch on YouTubeA sound made by a pair of hands doing one small job properly is the quickest way I have found back into my own body.
Quicker than any breathing exercise I have been taught, and it asks nothing of me while it happens.
All of them
What it is
People call this ASMR
Certain small, close sounds reach your body before your thinking has caught up with them, and something lets go. For me it arrives somewhere behind the collarbone, and my shoulders come down about an inch without my permission.
Nobody really knows why it works. It does not happen to everyone. I am not going to tell you it fixes anything. What I know is my own experience, and that is the only thing I will offer you.
The 3am Tape
Thirty minutes of quiet company in one unbroken piece, for the night you cannot sleep. No talking, no music, nothing to watch. Put it on, put the phone face down, and let it sit with you.
It is free. Tell me where to send it.
One email with the tape. After that, only the quiet things, rarely, and every one has an unsubscribe link.
If thirty minutes is not enough
The Long Hours is five of these stretched out properly. Twenty five minutes each, two hours and five minutes altogether, and no talking anywhere in it.
The tap by the back step. Rain arriving on iron. Brushing him out. Pressing what I picked up. Mending.
Most sleep downloads are one sound looped, and the loop is the problem. Give anybody twenty minutes lying awake and they will find the join, and once they have found it they cannot stop hearing it. These are built from several layers running at slightly different speeds, so the pattern does not come back around while the track is playing. There is no join to find.
Five MP3s, instant download, AU$5.95.
Get The Long Hours Or take the free thirty minutes firstThere is more of this on YouTube
Every film on this page is up on the channel, and the things that will not fit on a page are going there too. Longer quiet hours for sleeping, and for the nights when you cannot. Music made slow and low enough to settle a dog who hates being left alone. And the dog things I keep learning with Charlie, the sniffing, the settling, the recall that comes from relationship rather than a raised voice.
If that sounds like your kind of evening, come and sit with us over there.
Subscribe on YouTube See the channelAbout these
Maya is an AI-generated character and these films are made, not filmed. That has always been said plainly here and it is said plainly again now, because a quiet thing should not have anything hidden in it.
The writing under each one is mine.
New ones arrive every second day.