This essay on sounds has had a delay in reaching the delivery room. It has remained in the womb of my alleged brain because of a fear that some readers might interpret it as a cry for pity. My thoughts on my non-sightedness were distributed in an essay called “Sing No Sad Songs for This Old Geezer.” That essay was circulated more than thirty months ago. The essay that you are holding in your hand is not a cry for pity in any sense. It is in keeping with the desire on my part that no one should ever sing any sad songs for what glaucoma has done to my eyesight.
It is impossible to write an essay about sounds without referring to the immutable fact that sounds now play an important part in substituting for sightedness. I hope this essay will be an exercise in clinical facts, rather than expressing a desire for sympathy or pity. Speaking of clinical facts, this essay was delivered by a C-section performed by Dr. Ezra, the famed surgeon of Carl Schroth’s Mobile Gas Filling Station in Clayton, Missouri. This may be the first C-section ever performed on one’s own self. So if you are inclined to do so, please read this essay and try to see if some of the thoughts expressed herein match your own.
Last week in the early morning hours, I felt a need to visit la or le latrine. I sleep on a brass bed with large posts on each of the four corners. I took my white cane, which is always at my side, and I tapped it against one of the four posts. The brass bed returned a metallic sound. Following the foot of the bed, I made my way to the bathroom, where the white cane was tapped repeatedly on the tiles of the bathroom floor. A dull sound emanated therefrom. So here in the early morning hours I had experienced two sounds. At that point, I located my talking clock, which told me that the time was 4:01 AM, Eastern Daylight Savings Time. The window was open and I could hear a dog barking. So this makes a total of four sounds in this short nocturnal visit to the bathroom. Dogs do not care about such goofiness’s as Daylight Savings Time, but in any case in this short trip, I had encountered four different sounds. It was at this point that I decided there would be some merit in composing an essay having to do with sounds.
Natural law has provided that dogs are allowed to bark, to whine, and to whimper. They may also lick your hand or bite your leg. On the other hand, Shannon, our wonderful cat of 14 years, rarely had anything to say except when he was stepped on. From time to time, Shannon would purr, but that was about it. Those of us who know a little bit about farming know that cows moo, horses neigh, mules and donkeys say “hee haw,” and hamsters tend to squeak. This is all in accordance with natural law. Professor Doctor James Reese, who has a degree in animal husbandry from the Moody Bible Institute, plans to write a book interpreting these sounds. The proposed book is listed in the New York Times as a mystery.
Leaving the animals with four feet, we find that natural law also provides that two-footed animals enjoy the right to make sounds. The bird feeder in our back yard is swarmed by all kinds of birds who twitter and tweet.
The male cardinal, who is, in my estimation the most beautiful of birds, puts out a grunt as he approaches the bird feeder to enjoy an evening meal at dusk. The woodpecker has his own song, in addition to the sound of peck, peck, pecking. It has always been my great pleasure to hear the songs of the mocking bird. I am aware that mocking birds have a limited repertoire, and there is redundancy in the songs that they sing. Nonetheless, I take great pleasure in their singing from a telephone wire or from the trees.
Speaking of singing, a sound that pleases me endlessly, there is also the sound of the human voice. Opera tenors and sopranos try to hit high Cs; basses try to hit low Cs, and crooners such as the late Bing Crosby and Perry Como croon their musical messages. The juvenile screeching that attempts to pass as rock and roll music is not singing at all. It is an abomination and should be banned from the airwaves and from CDs. If I were asked to name the musical sounds of the human voice that please me most, I would probably choose the magnificent music of Umberto Giordano, who wrote “André Chénier” and a second opera called “Fedora.” The themes and melodies in both those operas are nothing short of gorgeous, which is a term that I am using for the first time in 343 essays.
For reasons unknown to me, I believe that tenors in the opera world are not very tall. To increase their height and to make them appear more manly, some of them wear shoes with two or three inches in the heel. Those build-ups are made of leather, and persons who use leather in the heels of their shoes often make a clicking sound when they walk. Sopranos find this clicking sound entirely seductive, or so I am told.
Our industrial base in this country, including the shoe industry, barely exists now. Shoe making has been farmed out to other nations with low wages. As a consequence, leather heels no longer offer sounds of their own, because they are now made of a composite substance sort of like rubber. Cobblers who used to repair shoes and sing with mouthfuls of tacks may be found only in the unemployment lines. As a younger man, I was a devotee of leather heels and from time to time, I would have taps attached to those heels not to attract attention but rather to absorb some of the wear and tear on the heels themselves. But those days are gone and now I wear shoes from Portugal, Korea, China, and Siam.
Before leaving the sounds of heels, I have an admission to make. When women wear what I believe are called Cuban heels with leather as the main component, and walk on surfaces inside, such as hallways, the tap tap tap of those heels proves very seductive to me. Unhappily and unfortunately, I don’t hear the sound of leather heels much these days. But I am glad that my views on their seductiveness have been made public, which tends to put my soul and gall bladder to rest with great peace.
In addition to operas, there are beautiful sounds that are made by our orchestras, symphonies, and philharmonics as well as by choirs and folk singers. The sounds that come from these sources can keep me entranced for hours and are captivating.
Turning from the world of music, there is a word or two to be said about the construction industry. On this street, there is a lovely house being torn down to make way for a much bigger and lovelier house in its place. The men who scoop up the bricks use a front loader, which has a big broad shovel in the front. From time to time, the driver of the front loader drops the shovel on the street, which causes a sound which is not musical but is impressive. The trucks that trundle up and down the street to haul the debris away have sounds of their own that tell you that they are not to be trifled with.
Next door there is a remodeling project being undertaken where circular saws as well as hand saws are being used. The circular saw has a whine of its own and one can tell when the workers are using hand saws. I am unable to tell you whether the hand saws are cross-cut or whether they are rip saws. But the sound of men sawing wood is pleasant. The whine of the circular saw also tends to remind me of dentists who use the newer high-speed drills. They whine much like the circular saw but they get the job done promptly, whereas the older drills have no whine to them at all but their burring sounds carry into the waiting room and cause apprehension there.
The hammers on the remodeling project have a sound of their own. When the claw hammers hit their target, there is a sharp retort. When the sledge hammers are swung, there is a firm retort. When ball pean hammers are used, a ping emanates.
I have no hope whatsoever of recording all of the sounds that come to mind. But before we go further, there is the cacophony of sounds that come from children playing at recess or at lunch hours. The Saint Rose of Lima School and Church has a playground that abuts the sidewalk which is only a few feet from one of the main streets in our town. When the children play there, they make all kinds of sounds, most of them of a joyous nature. They are having a brief respite from their scholarly duties and are sent by their teachers to the playground to “let off steam”. It has always been my pleasure to go by that corner when the children are playing because it makes me feel inspired.
Three or four blocks from the place where the children of Saint Rose of Lima play, there is a railroad track. Across from the Short Hills Train Station are the post office and the pharmacy. On many occasions when there is a need to go to the post office or the pharmacy, my wife tends to those duties while I sit in the car with the window down. The window is down to better hear the sounds of trains pulling into and leaving the station. Sometimes they ring bells and from time to time they blow their whistles. When a work train passes by, it often uses a whistle whose sounds are in the lower registers of the scale. The sound of the work train whistle is loud and insistent, and tells you that it is important to get off the tracks promptly.
I am quite certain that I have only scratched the surface of the sounds that exist in this world. There must be trillions of them every minute of the day. I cannot hope to list them all. There are sounds of pleasure and sounds of agony. There are sounds of satisfaction just as there are sounds of dissatisfaction. But in the end, I am pleased that the world of sounds exists. The sounds that I hear are basically pleasurable.
We made the decision to buy the four post brass bed years before the scourge of glaucoma took its final bite. Perhaps that was prescient, but I am here to tell you that the sound of the brass bed is now music to my ears. And as for the dog who inspired this essay on sounds to be written, if he can be located, I will give him a copy of this monumental work called “Sounds” for his own pleasure. In the future it is to be hoped that instead of barking at 4:00 AM, he will read this essay and know that the early morning hours are to be reserved for dreams of tranquility.
When I set out to write this little essay about sounds, I clearly bit off more than I could chew. As I said earlier, there are trillions of sounds every second of the day throughout the world. Of the trillions of sounds, my own mind treasures the sound of the ringing of a locomotive’s bell and its whistles and by the sound of children playing. So you see, it does not take much to put me into a pleasant state of mind.
E. E. CARR
May 22, 2008
Essay 313
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Kevin’s commentary: An easy favorite. To me, this essay was an aural version of the phrase “stop and smell the roses.” I depend on sound all the time, but rarely do I just stop and listen. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go up to the roof of my office and give it a shot.