I recently realized that one of the things I value most about being home is how it sounds. We’re way out in the middle of nowhere (well, way out enough), so there is virtually no traffic noise at all, which is dramatically different from school, where a major state road cuts right through the middle of campus. That’s the observation that prompted these thoughts, the relative quitetude of home, in terms of the base level of white noise, but like any home it is far from silent, being constantly filled with the sounds of familiar people tracing out the familiar rhythms of their lives. People showering, music and under-the-breath-singing-along muted by walls, people eating and gossiping and working in the yard, and on and on.
At school, in the dorm, we would get an up-front silence because everyone is in their room studying or reading, or at class, or eating, juxtaposed with the ubitquitous, indistinct background buzz of cars and people and whatnot, a phenomenon almost exaclty the opposeite of the sound here: lack of white noise and a foreground of familiar sounds vs. a noisy background and lack of foreground sounds.
Oh, and today I am reminded of the craft of writing (ironically, by thinking about sounds!)
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my name is dave
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August 26, 2006 at 12:06 am
The sounds of home is not always sounds of beauty yet, without them we are some what lost. I’ve been married 15 years with two teens and even just leaving home for a day feels like a lifetime. There are times I want to just get up and take off. Get out of this place, but no soon than i’m gone, i’m missing the sound of kids fighting, two teens playing loud radios with totally different tastes in music trying to drown each other out. The sounds of the dogs rolling on the front room floor, the stove going my spouse flipping through the channels. Even the dishwasher. Those are the sounds that give my life meaning. Without them life is way to quiet.