Within, Around and Underneath
While we have been learning to pay attention to and explore the almost infinite number of sounds—common and uncommon—I’ve had to remind myself, more than a few times, not to forget the sounds that are constantly happening within, around and underneath us. Some of these sounds can be a constant rhythm while others happen once, happen loud, and happen quickly. These were the concepts that we investigated in this week’s readings: the chapter “Rhythm and Tempo in the Soundscape” in The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer and the chapter “Sound of the Underground” in Earth Sound Earth Listening by Douglas Kahn. This first of the two aforementioned readings explores, as the title might imply, various rhythms found throughout the universe. It explores sounds ranging from a human’s heartbeat to those projected by radio signals. I particularly enjoyed the bit about the noises that occur within our bodies because so much of this quarter has focused on the sounds happening around us rather than within. An interesting point made by Schafer was his argument that humans use the tempo of the heart to measure the speed of other sounds around them. He states, “the heartbeat is nothing more than a rhythm module, roughly dividing humanly perceived rhythms into fast and slow” (Schafer 227). By this of course he means to explain that everything with a tempo gentler than that of the human heartbeat is deemed by us a slow sound, while those with a swifter tempo are categorized as fast. The constant, continuous rhythm of our heartbeat differs significantly from other noises we hear because, though it may be quiet, it is always present—from our first breath to our dying one. A noise that significantly contrasts this is that of an earthquake. This sound comes into being for only a short period of time and is described as Alexander von Humbolt through Kahn’s novel as, “a moment [that] destroys the illusion of a whole life” (Humbolt, Kahn 133). Unsurprisingly, these loud, one-time sounds can still have an effect on us internally, though not quite as one might expect. Thomas Ashcraft states in regard to earthquakes that an, “excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and fill it with terror” (Ashcraft, Kahn 133-134).
