Imagine having a soundtrack playing as you go through your life. We have those soundtracks – some we create and some are given by the world. Life for me has included music from the piano, the flute, the cello, the guitar. I can calm myself down with Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. I can jazz up my day with The Beatles or Marian McPartland.
But recently I’ve been thinking about gift sounds – the sounds of nature. There’s bird song and wind song and the rustling of leaves. There are crickets chirping. There’s the sound of ocean waves or water running in a stream or the rushing explosion of a waterfall. If you lived all your life next to an enormous, raging waterfall would you eventually become deaf? Would the sudden silence be unbelievable? Or would it happen so gradually that you wouldn’t notice?
Too many sounds in today’s world aren’t nice at all. Consider people saying hateful things to each other. Consider the sounds of gunfire. Consider the roar of flames or floodwaters. I was home one day when a hail storm arrived. It sounded like a freight train coming and then Mother Nature spent a few minutes throwing ice rocks at my house. The cats hid under the bed. I watched and listened in awe.
Unless you live in the middle of a nowhere wilderness you are going to deal with city sounds. Traffic. Sirens. Horns. Engines roaring. I read an article about electric cars and how they are so quiet that the car folks worried about people not noticing them and walking in front of them and getting run over. I don’t know how anyone could not notice something that big coming at you and walk in front of it. But the car folks started exploring how and what sound to add to electric cars so folks could hear them. I see more and more electric cars these days but if they make a certain sound, I haven’t noticed. It’s too noisy out there.
Once Hubby and I took a very early morning airplane flight and I looked forward to a nice, quiet, comfy nap during the flight. It was not to be. The airplane was totally silent except for the one woman who proceeded to carry on a loud conversation. I don’t know if her seatmate participated because all anyone on the plane could hear was her. I wanted to strangle her. Good thing I am a nice person as she lived and may still be keeping people awake for all I know.
So sounds are part of life. Here’s an average soundtrack. My work/employment days started with the clock radio snapping on. The classical station always started the day with military march music which used to make me want to call up that DJ and say that only soldiers want to start their days with military march music and maybe even some of them would like something else. How about soft piano music to slide people gently into the day?
These days – maybe sad to say – my day starts with the news – which is mostly bad. No details are necessary. You can check this out for yourself. I’m weaning myself off daily news as I don’t want to hear all the political election crap as none of these folks have a thing to say that I want to hear. Since I want to hear problem-solving solutions and they want to trash each other, I turn it OFF! YAY! There’s an old saying about silence being golden.
My day then may continue with the sounds of toast popping or milk pouring. I may listen to the loudest possible rock and roll as I tool around town and then switch to gentle harps or crashing cathedral organs. All those amazing choices are at my fingertips. WOW! The day almost invariably ends with TV sounds. Yep. Hubby and I are evening TV couch potatoes. And with luck the cat joins us at bed time and treats us to the sounds of ecstatic purring. And I think of gentle rain and soft breezes and imagine whale song and coyote song and owl song and sleep comes – quiet and peaceful.
Bumpy Schoolbus 