Driver's Seat
Sounds
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
| Article published on Tuesday, June 23, 2009 |
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As I write this, a man with a pneumatic drill stands in the street outside my window.
He is digging a hole in the pavement. And in my brain. The noise sounds like a dentist’s drill magnified a thousand times.
I wish the driller would stop or maybe strike a water main that would shoot a geyser a hundred feet into the air, causing the neighborhood kids to come running to play in the fountain. At least then the drilling sound would cease.
Life has thousands of sounds. Some are unpleasant. Many are lovely.
A phone ringing unexpectedly at 3 a.m. is usually an unwelcome sound. So is your girl friend saying, “George, we’ve got to talk.” A dripping of water where no dripping should be is a bad thing to hear.
The sound of birds singing is delightful. But not always. In Philadelphia I knew a priest who, when hungover, despised the warbling of birds. He told about it in meetings as he regained his sobriety and, I presume, his tolerance for birdsong.
A surgeon in a scrubsuit coming toward you with a smile can utter a most beautiful sound: “It went perfectly. We’ll send him home Tuesday.”
Remember when your babies were 3 months old? You’d tiptoe into the nursery and lean over the crib, and listen, very hard. But no sound. Panic starts. You leaned closer. Still no sound of breathing. Ready to scream, you touched your baby’s hand or face. And then she’d sigh or give a snuffle. Joyful noise, eh, Mom?
A midnight knock on the door. A policeman asks, “Sir, does your teenage son drive a 1998 maroon Ford?” Very bad sound, that one.
Korean War Zone, November 1951. At midnight your ship is suddenly ordered to detached duty 400 miles south. Your job as a radioman is to transmit a top-priority encoded ship’s movement report ASAP. You work your transmitters and your key like crazy, trying to raise a Navy shore station in Japan. No luck. One hour passes, then two. You sweat as you keep trying. Then, as your gloom deepens, the Morse code dit-dah-dit spells out your ship’s call letters: “NBEZ, this is Navy Yokosuka. Give us your message.” Glorious sound. I can still hear it.
Other good sounds: The whirr of a distant lawnmower late on a Saturday morning when you’re still half asleep and you can think of no good reason to get up. Music performed by the Gulf Coast Orchestra. Winston Churchill’s growl. The way Mama Cass Elliot pronounced the English language. The words “This session is now adjourned,” uttered by any chairperson at any meeting anywhere on earth.
Unpleasant, undesirable sounds? Almost all commercial messages on TV or radio; they steal your time and are studded with lies. A clap of nearby thunder when you’re in the middle of the 14th hole, especially when you’ve been playing well. Your name, called out by the professor on the very day you have no knowledge of the assigned material.
Motor vehicles are the source of distinctive sounds, good and bad. The repeated crank of the generator on a minus 10-degree morning in Minnesota. The triumphant whirr when the engine finally turns over. The alarming thump-thump of a tire going bad just as you start across the Howard Frankland bridge. The arrogant blare of a tail-gating rice rocket motorcycle driven by a punk at 90 mph with never a cop in sight.
Let’s not overlook airports and airliners. The school-marm preachiness of the public address voice repeatedly warning us all, “If anyone asks you to carry aboard any unknown package, especially if it exudes fine white powder, don’t do it or we will seize the package and imprison you, your children and your dog.” The nasal wind-up-doll recitation of in-flight procedures by the flight attendants. The reassuring whine of the jet engines as they increase power and reach a resounding, vibrating pitch that guarantees more than enough thrust to easily lift this bird off the runway and into the clouds. The congenial mumble of the plane’s captain saying, “Folks, it looks like a siffen rumster for us today, and we should be arriving at about wumsten o’clock,” followed by other inaudible tidbits of information.
Faced with being rendered blind or stone deaf, which would you choose? Most of us would probably opt for loss of hearing, but maybe not. Vision is the power that brings us most of what we learn in life, but hearing is more of a surrounding, all-encompassing connector to people and the world. Or so I’ve been told. Total silence can be a terrifying thing. We should spend an hour – or several hours – in a soundproof room. Sample the unbroken tomb-like quiet. When we emerge, we will welcome any sort of sound, even that of a jackhammer outside our window.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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