Cry

The cry of the neighbor's kid knives right into us. It's a skill acquired from evolution. Its urgency is in its disharmonious notes - a sharp, directed use of tone meant to get under our skin. Once inside of us, a parade of soft echoes moves through our bones into the ground. It's a soothing mechanism, that tells us not to be afraid. Disrupted again by yet another cry.


Radio Song

The truck stands at the corner store, delivering milk, juice and eggs, while its radio song throws desire desperately through the air. This voice wants to live with us forever, through its momentary message, until the song is over or the truck drives away. Meanwhile, a car alarm sounds out its recurrent anxiety attack: a reaction against the assumed threat of touch.


Cars

The cars move themselves and their drivers down the street, away from their last parking place on toward someplace new. The vaporous hum of their engines rolls through us in waves. This sound is a spiritual carrier from the room that we're in now. If we imagine ourselves transported, we will be. To an ocean which, whenever we can remember it, is creating a similar sound.


Air Brakes

The trucks release their air brakes into a screaming pressure sinking downwards. This high pneumatic sound is the force of halted movement. It slides into our gut, and collects itself there, building over time into a small, mountainous feeling. Its cumulative effect is a weight against transcendence: an internalized gravity that keeps us anchored to this world.


Bus

The deep rumble of the bus communicates the human nature of its load. Its bass line stops in the middle of the block, then beeps as it lowers its passengers to the ground. These people are arriving to be with us awhile, while others board the bus to be driven away. This bodily exchange makes a certain numeric sense, but emotionally it's impossible to accept or understand. This helps explain why new love comes with the fear that something else soon will be taken away.


Cell Phones

Our cellphones ring out a variety of sounds, all containing aspects of repulsion and attraction. The ring's power rests in its proximity and technique of repetition. No matter what the song is, it's an alarm for socialization, set out long ago as a requirement for our species. Our need for solitude reacts in startled opposition as these songs wind around us with their irritating embrace.

Airplanes

The airplane engines roll out flat over us, throwing heavy modulations across the sky. Those airplane passengers have a reason to feel above it all, though in just a few hours they will be down with us again. Flight is one way to get a sense of perspective, but here on earth we can use our minds to achieve a similar effect. Imagine a world other than the world we're in now. It's not above us. It's not below us. It's inside us.


Street Sweeper

The sound from the street sweeper is the loudest sound; a combative roar that asserts the difficulty of its calling. With a heroic brush it caresses all our trash inwards, taking everything we've thrown down back up into itself. The sound of its motor reproaches us for some error in our understanding. Trying to appease it, we offer new pieces of trash, dropping them down quietly in its wake.


Wind

The wind through the street trees is a barely present sound. It's a soft underlayer of sound that touches us subconsciously, coaxing up memories we've pushed down to forget. To everyone we left behind, "We had our reasons and still have them." This said by the person we've decided ourselves to be. In quiet opposition is the sound of wind, as it pulls leaves from the trees and carries them to the ground.


Window Fan

The steady hum of the window fan turns into our chest and joins us there in our breathing, with a repetition that folds us into an atmosphere of comfort. It delivers us from the distractions of the external world, and steadies us into the place that we sometimes call sleep. In this place our desires express their proper importance, and all our dreams are played out for us, under the guise of dreams.