What Can You Hear

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Music of the Spheres was composed for the banjo; that angels play bongo drums instead of harps; that the sound of heavenly choirs is just the chintzy ringtone from an anonymous burner phone.

I've always thought Orpheus was tone-deaf. It's just that ancient melodies were so plinkety-plonkety discordant that nobody back then ever suspected the truth. Virgil can say what he likes, but this is clearly the real reason why Eurydice returned to the underworld: she preferred the relative peace and quiet of Hades to her husband's endless cacophony. 

Frankly, we'd all be better off sitting in silence than listening to the caterwaul of the world. There's always the song of the wind; the natural rhythm of the rain; the symphonic sweep of the sunrise and sunset's great aria; even an October day's mellow concerto for tuba and trombone. 

Well, we could enjoy those consolations if the wind's song wasn't stifled by the sonic boom of rockets and guns, if the rain's rhythm wasn't washed away with the staccato spittle of TV's talking heads, if the sunrise and sunset's operettas weren't silenced by thick blankets of brown smog; if October's brass band hadn't already been told to put a sock in it by the consumer scream of industrial Halloween.

Personally, I try to avoid the mournful echo of my own disenchantment by listening to recordings of the past captured on audio cassette. I've been slowly soundproofing the Memory Palace where I live so the belligerent bellowing of nowadays can't be heard. That and noise canceling headphones are pretty useful modern tools.




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