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The Power of Sound


What is sound to a person who cannot hear? It is the absence of annoyance but also the yerning of connection. The author of, A Natural History of the Senses, has the idea that sound is what connects us upon all else, for what is community without audible communication? Truely, “If you lose your sense of hearing, a crucial thread dissolves and you lose track of life’s logic. You become cut off from the daily commerce of the world, as if you were a root buried beneath the soil”, Diane Ackerman.

As a person that has a sensory issue in regards to hearing I have some understanding of this, everything that I hear causes me to have a physical reaction. The rushing of water flowing down a river makes me breathe in deeply hoping for the smell of earth and a light misting of water on my face. While the sound of chewing disgusts me to the point of jerking away. 

But the most magical thing that sound has been able to do to me is to take me to places that are no longer real, they are only fragments in my memory. When a song flows into my ears I can feel my heart floating into a place of nothingness, a place where I am me and not. 

The best example of the power of hearing more specifically has on me is with the song, Pulaski at Night by Andrew Bird. The plucking of violins combined with the sad hum of the singer's voice brings me bliss. No longers am I Rey, but the vibration of the earth underneath me, the water that flows throw the ground and through me.

Sound can be harmful, it can be used to broadcast propaganda to end a people, but it is so much more, it is the world around us, it gives us the feeling of life around us, the birds, the grass being ripped from its root, and the heartbeat of one's lover underneath them.
How lonely is a world without sound?

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