Wednesday, June 09, 2021

Sounds and Feelings

I thought I'd been one of the first people to hear a new genre of music: I could hear an unfamiliar timbre floating across Burgess Park. As I tuned in my ears, I realised that was the sound of a strimmer, wielded by a council worker along the way.

Later we sat in the town garden as it got dark, listening first to a loud neighbouring electric lawnmower, then children in a nearby playground. The noise died away until all we could hear were birds. The app Chirpomatic identified a Goldfinch's call. There really is an app for everything.

It was a very odd feeling to have had a night out, to have been a stopout. I got home after dark, bringing a flush of night air into my stuffy house. Summer has arrived: the pandemic has busted through the seasons as a timetable of our lives, which are now divided by lockdowns and vaccinations and punctuated by an occasional funeral. We breathe in and out: sadness and fear, sadness and fear. 

Government lies float about us like clouds of flies, those irritating bluebottles that you can't get out of the house: bzz, bzz, bzz. We must drown out the sound with music.

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