Sound Check
May 21, 2009, by Cathy Fischer
Cathy Fischer listens in on the sounds of yesterday and today.
The other day as I was driving down the street in North Berkeley, my reverie was interrupted by the all too familiar sound of a car alarm. As I got closer, I realized that the sound was coming from a classic yellow school bus. Honk, honk, honk… it repeated over and over again without breath or pause. Why, I wondered, did this particular alarm strike me as odd?
Okay, I sound a bit like Granny here, but stay with me. When I was young and rode the school bus, there was no such thing as a car alarm. The incessant alarm coming from that bus made me stop and wonder, what other modern noises have become a part of our surroundings? From the phone click of call-waiting to the bleeps of Tivoing through commercials, new conveniences have brought about new sounds.
Much of my youth was spent in Los Angeles. The repetitive whirl slap of low-flying police helicopters and shrill sirens from a nearby fire station were part of the city’s soundtrack. Children at play and mothers yelling to come in for dinner added human chords to the immigrant neighborhood, where the scent of night blooming jasmine and pan-fried onions also filled the air.
Music has always been important to me. How innovative was the transistor radio, that forgotten ancestor of the MP3 player? I’ll admit, sometimes I enjoy listening to James Brown playing on my iPod while squeezing cantaloupes at Whole Foods, but usually I prefer to be earbud free and instead of being deep into “It’s a Man’s World” out in the real world and in the present.
I went to the theatre the other evening to see an ACT production of Jose Rivera’s Boleros for the Disenchanted. I was thankful for the pre-curtain warning “Turn off your cell phones and pagers” but, sigh, someone’s Nokia ring went off during act two. I later noticed that the playbill had instructions printed in the back, under the heading “Cell Phones!” (the exclamation point is theirs); it states, “text messaging is very disruptive and not allowed”. Texting in the theatre? Sacrilege!
Recently Obama’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was disrupted during a briefing by not one, but two cell phones! These are journalists, mind you. Are they not in the business of communications?
Remember the days before email pings, ringtones and microwave beeps? Remember those analog sounds like the return of the typewriter carriage or coins dropping in a pay phone? And those small pops and scratches on vinyl records that gave a dimension of sound where now there is none?
What sounds do you remember? Are there new sounds you wish would go away?
May 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am
Going to the grocery store is rendering me hard-of-hearing. One sound I can live without is ear-piercing “beep” that accompanies the scan of each purchase at checkout. Isn’t there some way to turn that thing down?
Add to this, the metallic “crash” of shopping carts. I think the minimum-wage grumps responsible for rounding up errant carts give themselves extra points if they slam them together next to you as you’re loading groceries into your car’s trunk.
I figure that each trip to the store costs me thousands of sound-transmitting cilia.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:20 am
The sound of a rotary telephone, the clicking noises of changing the channels on a television (before remotes), the hum of metal wheeled roller skates against the concrete, the ringing bells of the Good Humor truck rolling down the street, the whooshing sound of a soda fountain to name a few.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:24 am
Frikkin’ Abercrombie and Fitch!!! Call waiting music, JEEZ! People who drive with their radios so loud my car shakes. Why oh why must we assaulted by someone else’s tastes everywhere we go? I despise beeps, boops, alarms, rings, and pings of any kind.
I’m an actor…I have had people take calls in the middle of my one-woman show, for Pete’s sake! I almost never go to the movies anymore because people are so unconscious or just down right rude with their texting and cell phones…and I’m a movie fan. Oooh–this whole topic just pisses me off.
Blissfully, I live in the mountains and the most annoying sounds in my neck of the woods are crickets, frogs and dogs barking–well, they’re my dogs barking….
There’s an amazing hike in Dinosaur Nat’l Monument called The Sounds of Silence Trail. It is the quietest place in the US because no planes fly over, it’s far from a city, and almost no one goes there. That quiet is as delicious as a drink from an icy cold pristine river,as fulfilling as a hard days work, as marvelous as the laughter of a child, and as necessary.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:32 am
Oh the Good Humor truck. I miss that for sure and the excitement it brought with it’s silly little ditty. Thanks for the memory Karen. And Conz, I’ve been to your “quiet” retreat and I recall the sound of a neighbor’s chainsaw waking me up early Sunday morning. But generally, it is pretty darn quiet, except for the dogs barking and our howling with laughter.
May 21st, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Yep–Chain saws in the fall and weedwhackers in the spring. The howling with laughter goes on year long, especially when you come up. I love you, girliegirl.
May 22nd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Wind chimes always say “Marin County” to me.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:35 am
You’ve brought me to the wayback machine. I miss the sound that happened when my girlfriends and I were in class (elementary and jr high school) and were trying with all our might not to laugh. Then the little compressed laugh sound would slip out and make it even harder not to burst out loud. Teenage giggles were such a joyful and fun sound.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Sounds from the ’50s: manual egg beaters, ice-cracking apart in the freezer ice trays when you pulled the lever, the slap of a pink rubber ball against the side of the house as I played catch with myself. Modern pet peeve noises: jet skis when I’d prefer the sound of lapping waves, leaf blowers at 8am (what happened to rakes?????)
May 26th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Automatic ice makers that routinely wake you up if your bedrom is near the kitchen. They didn’t have those “back then.”
May 27th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Trains. I love the sound of trains. They were then and they are now and that in and of itself is comforting.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:46 am
Leaf blowers, grrrrrrrrr! I think those should be outlawed. Noise polluters. Remember those “drop and cover” air raid drills? Not a sound I particularly miss or ever want to hear again, but it sure brings me back.