Here’s a way of relaxing that has something in common with mindfulness and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). Find somewhere you can be still for five minutes. Listen for the furthest-away sound you can hear – somewhere right on the edge of all the sounds at your disposal. Focus on it. Don’t think ‘what’s that?’, think ‘what’s this doing to me?’. Every sound will do something to you.

The trick of what you’re trying to do here is to be more of a musician and less of a storyteller. Every sound has something that might lead you to another sound, as part of a sequence,  not a story. Music is sequential, even if we sometimes allow it to form part of a narrative. But sequence isn’t the same as story. It doesn’t have to add up. It can drift, stutter, fold back on itself.

When you hear the sound like that, let it go, and tune in to the closest sound you can hear. Listen to it like you listened to the last one. Now find another sound far away, or even the same one as last time, if you care to. It won’t come to you the same, second time around. Every sound gets heard differently, even when it’s the same note, digitally looped. There will be a difference.

Listen for the difference. Know those sounds as intimately as you can through their difference: intimacy is the sharing of differences, not their elimination (says Fred). Sociality is not coherence; it’s disintegration and recreation: homeostatic return. Keep listening, and feel yourself relax.