In a sense, audio is the perfect way to take texts for a walk.

The words go in through your ears: a voice in your head. A benign possession. For me it is quite a relief to swap my unruly thoughts with carefully chosen words written by others in books. The voice matters of course. It is difficult to find books I want to read, so I record some myself. Amateur, full of hesitation, small noises, mistakes. Always the same at each listening, becoming part of the text like stains or misprints. Another layer. I listen to the words, a traffic light turns red, the street gets steep, a paperbark catches my attention, a gust of wind, an aeroplane drowns out my voice, the smell of rain. A joke makes me laugh out loud, a stranger looks at me and smiles, I fancy another crosses to avoid me. Then again, if I miss something in the text, or if I hear a word I like, I cannot easily go back as I would in a book. If there is a difficult or interesting passage or idea I slow down, or even stop, becoming all ears. The text and the walk complicate and fill each other.

Listening to texts is similar to reading, or is it?