Sound

My laptop refuses to unmute itself. It's just the latest way it's giving up the ghost. While I realize that my laptop is not purposefully trying to agitate me, it is still frustrating. I keep checking and unchecking the mute button, and unsuccessfully trying to restrain my rage.

I really love sounds. I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently. My bible study has been talking about meditation and it reminds me of the classes I took in Junior High. All candles and incense and quietness, the meditation was about focusing on nothing. I used it as a way to calm panic attacks and retreat from my life full of teenage stresses. Despite my almost ADD-like attention span I was able to fall into and meditate extremely well. Sometimes I used candles, sometimes visualizations (never incense because my mom thought that was 'weird') but I was never able to master meditating in total silence. Oh, I learned the techniques about imagining heavy hands over your ears or turning down dials to quiet the world...but they never worked for me. I just enjoy hearing too much.

I've always been enamored with certain sounds. The sound of rain on metal bleachers, fingernails on keyboard keys, heels across parking lots, and the popping of logs in a fire. Some of them can be traced back to specific events or times in my life, sense memory that resonates within me. But other sounds I just love because they are there. Like a foodie salivating over a farmers market, I love to immerse myself in sound. A new piece of music, the sound of my neighbors mowing, waves on a beach, water dripping in the sink. I love lying in bed and just listening. The scrape of a squirrel on the roof, wind pushing branches together, cars rushing past. They all swirl around me, a rich orchestra of life.

Better yet, sound fuels my imagination. The heavy footfalls in a parking garage scream tension and danger. The gentle burble of a creek highlights serenity and calm. Chirping crickets speak of summer laziness and relaxation. When I get particularly stuck on a piece of writing, I like to stare out my window with my eyes closed. Seeing things often distracts me too much. When I see a man walk down the sidewalk I automatically come up with his story. That's the hat his wife made for him, he hates it because blue reminds him of his first love who he lost tragically in a boating accident and yet it makes his wife happy so he puts it on and smiles through the pain. Those type of stories are easily thought of when I look...but when I hear...my mind reaches an entirely different level.

The wind tickles the chimes outside my window, barely eliciting a few bell like sounds before rushing around the bushes beneath them. A car door closes across the street and someone hums as they unload items from a trunk. The humming is satisfied but tuneless, just a happy noise bubbling up from the soul. A rhythmic sound comes from the far right, wheels of some sort running over cracks in the sidewalk. Maybe a kid on a bike heading down to grab a Slurpee, or a mother pushing her baby in a stroller. I tilt my head to listen better, straining to determine the source. It sounds like several wheels so maybe it's someone roller staking, or a boy on a skateboard. Yet it sounds bigger so it could be a family pulling their children in a wagon. The temptation to open my eyes grows as I hear the sound nearing my window but I clench them closed tightly. Listening isn't about finding out the reality behind the sound, it's about using the sound to stretch my imagination.

Sure, I probably won't use any of what I hear in my writing and most of the times I don't even include sound descriptions in my writing. It's just one of those extra pieces that lies just off the page. You know those, right? You write about places and people and things and fit so much onto a page yet there is all this extra that is never included. The main character's childhood pet isn't necessary to the story, yet the knowledge is in your head. The way the emergency blanket feels clutched in the firefighters hands doesn't add to the plot, but you know it anyway. The sounds that permeate a story don't always get included, but I can hear them just the same.