sounds that matter

Sounds can tend to be obscure and unobserved given their mundane ness. We hear so many sounds in a day that we do not pay attention to anything less prominent and piercing than a plane crash, if we are particularly obtuse; while the average person tends to gloss over as loud a racket as car tyres screeching. What is new in a speeding motorist nowadays, asks the brain of this person. Let us focus on more life-threatening sounds like the wheezy rasp of fast-approaching global warming, or the dying gasp of social ethics.

The soft rustling of a tree branch as a gust of wind rubs against it; the contented whirr of a well oiled ceiling fan; the consistent, unobtrusive clicks and punches of a computer lab; the drone that ensues in a room where an audience awaits the start of their show; the distant, sweeping din of ocean waves crashing against each other simultaneously – are all too poetic for the common man to notice unless paid to do so. Now have an innocent person stretch and yawn in his creaky chair and the silence of the auditorium is broken by it and the ensuing turning of heads and murmurs.

People hear things that they want to pay attention to. In the awkward, eerily silent auditorium, the creaking of the chair provides an entertaining distraction and so people fall prey to its pull. While the screeching car might indicate a motorist about to perish, one continues to give their ipod their undivided attention ad nauseum. Sounds that matter get heard. Others might as well be falling trees in an uninhabited forest.