“Sound unbound by nature becomes bounded by art.”
It is a beautiful day. The sun is bright. The air is still. It could even get as warm as 70+°. The Cape is inching toward summer, and today is a preview, a delightful preview.
I have a concert this afternoon, the first in a busy concert season. In June alone there are ten. The fingers on my left hand are getting meaty.
The dogs scared the heck out of me around four this morning. Both of them, at the same time, jumped off the bed and ran downstairs. Henry was barking though that is not unusual. He is a loud boy. I decided not to go check, but, instead, went back to sleep. The dogs joined me.
In reading the paper this morning, I saw scrum used in a different way. I had only known it as a rugby play. The sentence read, “A scrum of reporters…” I checked and it also means a disordered or confused situation involving a number of people. It was used to describe the reporters surrounding Santos and yelling questions.
When I was a kid, I used to keep a dictionary close in case I ran into a word I didn’t know. Even now there is one by my bed but down here I just ask Duck.
When I was growing up, my house and yard were filled with sounds. I loved the turning sound of the phone dial, the click click. My father always used a hand mower. It too had a click click sound. Our fridge didn’t hum. It always made all sorts of what sounded like grunting noises as if it were having trouble keeping up with its responsibilities. Floors creaked. The stairs creaked even more. The back door always slammed despite my mother yelling about closing the door. We knew when the milkman and the garbage men came. They had a metallic sound. The milkman’s bottles hit the wire basket. The garbage man used his foot to open the metal cover then pulled out the metal bucket filled with garbage. When he was done, he’d use his foot to slam the cover down.
I remember the sounds of the stores uptown. Cash registers had bells sounds and their drawers had metallic clangs when they slid open. There was no music in stores, but every now and then the supermarket had an announcement. Bells hanging on the door frames rang when shop doors were opened. At the bus stop by the movie theater, the bus engines were noisy and smoke always came out of the exhaust.
In my house and yard the sounds are intermittent. The sweetest sounds are the birds greeting the day, and the chimes ringing in the wind. When the school bus goes noisily down the street, Henry barks. The landscapers are the noisiest. Henry barks at the sounds of the motors. In the house, I can hear the furnace working, and the clink of ice cubes falling into the tray. I hear the beep when the coffee is brewed and when the microwave has finished.
In the darkness, the night birds sing and the frogs croak. The streets are quiet. It is my favorite time of the day.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
May 11, 2023 at 6:15 pm
Have fun! I hope your finger is okay.
Bad sounds and music in Europe tonight, the second semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest, the annual festival of bad music and overexaggerated shows, it was fun. Great drag queen show in between. Final tomorrow, I hope I can watch, I’m away from home for a few days next week, probably without enough time to comment here.
Rain today, I can hear the drops on my window. We take every rain we can get.
May 11, 2023 at 6:33 pm
Hi Birgit,
It was a great concert at a place called Cape Abilities. Their clientele is adults all with what is usually called a disability like Down Syndrome. We did Motown. They danced and sang. It was great. My chord hand with two arthritic fingers hurts after having practice Tuesday, a lesson Wednesday and today’s concert.
Christer usually keeps me updated about the Eurovision Song Contest. He always enjoys it. Good thing it isn’t Florida which is on the attack against drag queens.
Rain is always welcomed.
May 11, 2023 at 10:22 pm
Hi Kat,
Today was mostly cloudy and dreary. In the morning the ground was wet from rain that fell overnight. We topped out at a muggy 85°.
I live in a fairly quiet neighborhood. There’s a two lane street behind my backyard which occasionally has drivers who drive trucks or motorcycles with loud tailpipes. My neighbor across the street starts his pickup truck in the morning and then revs up the engine making loud noises in the mornings. Having a loud pickup truck is very important to own while living in an upper class, suburban neighborhood. Many Texans own large dual rear wheel, loud pickup trucks for no reason except to tell everyone, “I don’t give a damn if I pollute the environment and waste gas”. These huge vehicles are usually parked in the front driveways along with their large SUVs that their wife drives. They leave them outside the garage because normal two car garages are too small to accommodate these behemoths. When thunderstorms are forecasted, these folks run outside to inflate large plastic bubbles which are designed to protect their large vehicles from hail damage. 🙂
May 12, 2023 at 12:21 am
Hi Bob,
We ended up on the mid 70’s. It was short sleeve weather and was the warmest day so far.
My street is short, but the perpendicular streets on each side are long. The street closest to me is a straightaway and cars often speed down it. A school bus is the noisiest vehicle which rides down the streets. The street has a low spot which fills in heavy rains, and cars are often stuck when they try to drive through.
The turn street to the perpendicular streets gets a lot of traffic. I can hear motorcycles and sometimes trucks.
There are several streets off the straightaway. When I first moved here, there was only one street behind me.
SUVs are everywhere. I am amazed when I see some of these elephant size cars. This time of year landscapers’ vehicles are everywhere. They drive me crazy.