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Published May 13th, 2026
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My Body, the Foley Studio, is one unlike you’ve felt or heard before. While you may have experience with your own, I find mine to be unique to me. I’d like to share some of the many sounds my body can make in such a short time:
- Groans equivalent to, or surpassing, the stretching of stiff joints from a still night of sleep
- The hissing of a CPAP as I pry it from my face
- Coughs: Throaty, huffing, or belly
- Gurgling of lungs and whistling of nostrils
- Creaky joints and popping movements
- Droning notes to help make neti pots flush
- Catch phrases in more intonations you care to remember
- Gulping of water, plucking of floss, scrubbing of teeth
- Slapping of feet on cold linoleum, tile, or lifeboards
- A Farmer’s Blow or a normal use of a tissue
- Narration of activities, making the benign feel impactful
- Rattling of bottles, sprays of inhalers, and chewing of food
- The whir of a nebulizer or the cleaning of equipment
My Body, the Foley Studio, is not limited to the sounds above, but presence in morning routine can quickly remind me that the time it takes to make my body work is more than audible to the world around me.
I can’t help but wonder, whether on my quietest or loudest days, what narrative my noises make for those that cannot see. To me, it’s a routine and necessity. To them, do they feel annoyance or concern? Is it someone with respiratory trouble they hear, or someone painting their apartment with an air compressor and no mask - reaping what they sow, and rightfully so!
With this thought, I found myself reflecting on the importance of practicing infantlike-curiosity or applied imagination to the world around us.
If applying this mindful approach to our work, do we have a responsibility to our teams to behave performatively and narratively, curating a impression they have of what you are doing when they themselves cannot see? Or, does that burden befall the listener that needs to realize they are forming their own opinions when they can only hear the foley studio as hoofbeats, and not two coconuts clacking together?
It’s in our nature to group what we see into cohorts, schemas, etc. I think that it’s an invaluable skill and the ability to see those connections can often outweigh the practical application thereof. But at what point does that nature become reductive and harmful?
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When writing the thoughts above, I realized I asked a lot of questions…but I didn’t write a lot of answers.
“Well, damn, I don’t have one (an answer),” I thought. And that stuck with me.
I think there is an obvious need to accept that you just don’t know some things. I think there is a healthy balance to questioning what you know and what your perceive. If I perceived a lion was next door every time the toddler replayed The Lion King, it would be a miserable time. But I think that it’s important to practice mindfulness in unconventional ways and expand it to a level of empathy and interbeing with our projects, environment, and lifestyle.
Tip
Take time to dwell on the sounds or results that you are seeing and think about all the elements that contribute to it. You cannot practically refuse to take the world at face value, but aren’t there things that you’ve formed assumptions or beliefs on that are anchored to your routine so much so that you forget you believe them some days?
Summary
Breathe, sit with the sounds, and use your imagination to explore the profile of what you’re witnessing:
- Is that whirring drone a mere annoyance, or does it tell a bigger story? A nebulizer, a paint sprayer, a vaccuum, or an air mattress can all tell different tales.
- What about a noisy, knocking car in the parking lot? Depending on when you hear it, it’s someone working on a project car for fun or doing their best to afford transportation to and from work.
- Silence? Some people hear nothing and infer that means nothing is happening, and it makes them mad. But what if silence means that things are entrenched or dug in, in a flow state or, even better, finished and waiting for someone else?
I once had a neighbor that I didn’t know lived there. He was a tall man with a large frame. I thought the apartment was vacant. When he met us, he apologized profusely for the noise he made daily. He was self conscious as could be. He worked odd hours, construction, and left his work boots outside in the hallway to avoid making noise inside. To this day I have never recognized a time I heard him, or another neighbor as invisible as him. I think this exchange is exemplary of how perception shapes the reality that we choose to be a part of, in a practically applied way. To him, he was lumbering and noisy, a burden to his neighbors. To us, we still think about how quiet he has been and how we have never once had another neighbor as mindful as him. I wouldn’t want any person to burden or restrict themselves out of fear of judgement, but I think that at some point he heard His Body, The Foley Studio, and asked himself if his sound effects were disrupting the vision of our own film.
I don’t really write with an objective to compel anyone to do something, but more as a thoughtfulness exercise in public. I hope that if you found yourself reading this, you take time to explore your impressions of things around you with a infantlike-curiosity of the activities around you.