Deep In The Grief Of Extinction

Evolutionary elaboration and diversification of sounds, from crickets to frogs to birds, have been driven, in many species, by the aesthetic choices of females. It was mother’s milk that gave mammals our muscular and nimble throats, and thus allowed humans to speak and sing. The sounds of our world are the product of all genders, but females have had a disproportionately large effect in producing much of what we admire and need in soundscapes. The diversity of animal voices, the beauty of vocal expression, and the sonic livability of the city owe much of their existence to the power of the feminine in biological evolution and human culture. City noise also creates a hostile environment for those whose senses and nervous systems differ from the norm. Many restaurants are now so loud that anyone with even slight hearing loss is cut out of conversations, unable to discern patterns of speech amid the tumult. The noise in these places is like a high step at the front door, impassable to wheelchairs, but the barrier, in this case, is to those with ears that differ from the norm. Neurotypicals and those who live unburdened by anxiety disorders often thrive in the energies of noise. But clamor is often an unbearable assault to those on the autism spectrum or for those for whom anxiety is a constant companion. Noise can wall people out of participation in the life of the city, a barrier no less real for being invisible to the eye. A few who cannot abide the city’s clamor have the privilege of being able to escape, but every child born into this soundscape and every adult whose job or family binds them to the city is locked into distress and, sometimes, terror. Noise is, in some parts of the city, oppression of the minority by the majority.

Higher Ground

But the same soundscape sometimes shoves me into the early stages of panic, a vise of sound that squeezes my heart and breath, and fills me with a frantic and despairing desire to escape. The city is a window into my autonomic nervous system, the unconscious tuning of my body and senses. Sound reveals not only the dynamics of our society but the texture of our psyches. My varying responses to the city, then, are bodily symptoms of the city’s sonic paradoxes. The city draws me deeper into my humanity. My connections to others expand amid the city’s confluence of cultures and its role as a hub for art and industry. I am fed by streets on which I hear dozens of languages, venues where both the leading edges and the canons of the world’s music come alive, and theaters where the power of the living, spoken word is celebrated. We are a convivial species with curious, empathetic minds. The human qualities of imagination, creativity, and collaborative action flourish in cities’ intensified social networks. I imagine that the inhabitants of the first cities in Mesopotamia felt the same surge of possibility. In this new urban habitat, we can paradoxically become more fully ourselves, a homecoming for the human species. Yet the city also ensnares us in the worst qualities of our species.

It Won't Last Long

Inside the trap, the city talks over us, constantly, with such vigor that the chemistry of our blood and the tone of our nerves revolt, sometimes to the point of sickness and death. No wonder we feel the need to be loud, to assert our presence and agency. But in doing so, we become part of the sonic distress for others. The assault is all the more powerful for its union of the senses. In the din and heave of sound, the bile of traffic fumes pervades our noses and mouths. Some drivers lean on the horn and will not let up. Others blast in triplets or in stuttering phrases, anger sonified. Then an ambulance tries to pass, its wail impotent in the logjam of metal. The cloud of exhaust hangs in the street canyon. At night, only one or two stars are visible, the rest veiled by the dome of light, the aura of particulate pollution reflecting the energies of billions of electric lights. Underfoot, the ground is unrelentingly hard. Footfall here is always martial, strident, and clipped, unlike the varied sounds of shoes and feet outside the city as they pass over leaf litter, rock, gravel, sand, and moss.

No Line on the Horizon

You cannot escape me. In the sensory violations and dysphoria of the city, there is a door to empathic understanding of other species, our relatives under the waves and those terrestrial species who carry the sea only as memories in the fluids of their cells. Submerged in sonic violence, I am whale, my entire body thrumming night and day with unwanted vibrations, energies alien to my flesh. My ancestors and their long experience of sound did not prepare me for this. In a soundscape dominated by the noise of a single species, I am forest, stripped of the diversity of voices that took millions of years to evolve. I am now deep in the grief of extinction. Reveling in the songs of the few remaining species, I am blackbird, a wild, broken singer. I feel myself propelled by life’s joyful, improvisational imperative to find a voice in this strange new world. The sounds of the city not only plunge us more deeply into our humanity. They are, if we attend to their effects, an immersion in bodily, sensory kinship with all speaking, listening beings. But unlike these other beings, we humans have a measure of control. We can choose a different sonic future. The whales, forests, and birds cannot. The ring contains no hint of clang or jangle, just a single frequency, sweetened and fattened by overtones, pitched a few notes below middle C, exactly at the midpoint of the range of human speech. Although I stand two meters away from the bell, the sound seems to emerge from within me, a calming, centering glow that spreads from chest to extremities, then flows outward into my perception of the park in which I stand. A horizontal wooden beam hangs from chains next to the bell. A child stands on tiptoe and reaches up to haul on a rope dangling from the beam.