The Words of Sounds (2) - Dybek

Earlier this year I posted a paragraph from a novel that explored the sound of a scene so beautifully I thought it was worth sharing. Here's another bunch of words you can practically hear. It's text from a "A Minor Mood," a short story by Stuart Dybek from his outstanding collection I Sailed With Magellan. There's music and noise and sound throughout this book (and all of SD's work) but something about this scene really stands out for me.

Here's the set-up: An aged and worn-down character Lefty is remembering back to the times when his Grandmother ("Lefty's Gran") would nurse him back to health from the croup, and other bronchial tube-challenged conditions. Imagine a room in an old Chicago apartment building on the South Side, full of pots and pans balancing on radiators, steam pouring forth, the smell of Vicks Vaporub hanging in the air.

"She taught Lefty to play the measuring spoons like castanets in accompaniment to her gypsylike singing. She was playing the radiators with a ladle as if they were marimbas. Lefty was up, out of bed, flushed, but feeling great, and in steam that was fading to wisps he was dancing with his gran. Her girlish curls tossed as around and around the room they whirled, both of them singing, and on or the other dizzily breaking off the dance in order to beat or plunk or blow some instrument they'd just invented: Lefty strumming the egg slicer, Lefty's Gran oompahing an empty half gallon of Dad's old-fashioned root beer; Lefty bugling "Sunshine" through the cardboard clarion at the center of a toilet-paper roll, Lefty's Gran chiming a closet of empty coat hangers; Lefty shake-rattle-and-rolling the silverware drawer; Lefty's Gran Spike Jonesing the vacuum cleaner; Lefty, surrounded by pots and lids, drum-soloing with wooden spoons; while Lefty's Gran, conducting with a potato masher, yelled "Go, Krupa, go!"

According to Blogger.com's spell check, "oompahing" is misspelled. But Dybek knows better.

P.S. Read this one outloud, if you will.

We eat, we breath, we sleep, we compile

Mix tapes: Formative, crushing, life-saving little nostalgia-bombs... even when they're carefully compiled by strangers and lovingly bestowed (or awkwardly thrust) upon other strangers. Case in point - a new, sharply designed collection of sixty (!) stories by a whole mess of folks about mix tapes given, received, dreamed, destroyed. And if you're in Chicago - come out tonight to the Hideout to help celebrate the release of Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves.

Disclaimer: This isn't the altruistic-est of posts... my good pal Jason's (ha! just noticed his wikipedia page for the first time) behind CFME, if you remember this Lissenup post then you know I'm a contributor, and I'll be participating in tonight's event, on the "panel of experts." Ha! (I'm honored.)

city blues

After two and a half days out in Harvard, IL, I'm feeling kind of glum, back in Chicago. Twenty four hours ago we were listening to acorns drop from tall trees, light breezes swim through the oak groves, birds rustling in trees and thousands of insects singing in a range of pitch and tone.

Back in the city, it's a different story. Shared a train car with a pair of the most foul-mouthed, angry drunks you could imagine (now I'm not one to mind an expressive/emphatic word choice, and have been known swear up a storm without too much provocation, but...this was different. Aggressive. Insistent. Really, really unpleasant.) And as I type this sirens are screaming off in the distance - getting closer.

It's enough to make me wonder if my switches are lined properly - a question I've been thinking about since N. dropped me at the train station in Harvard earlier today, to catch a train back to Chicago. I'm beginning to have my doubts.

Pin Drop Melody

When I learned my dear niece was checking in here, realized it was high time to post some thoughts that have been rattling (quietly) around in my head - and which don't actually have anything to do with Monkey.

I'm almost finished reading this book about one man's intense quest for preserving silence - just one square inch in a national park out in Washington - in the so very noisy world we live in. Author Gordon Hempton gets a bit too vainglorious (new favorite synonym for 'proud') at times but i'm down with his basic premise - that silence in the natural world is endangered, and that this does not bode well for humankind. ("My aim," I explain, "is to establish the Hoh Valley as the world's first quiet place. This would be essentially a no-flight zone.")

At the same time I'm reading a book by John Cage, which in some ways counters One Square Inch by, among other things, exploring some of the very noise that drives Hempton crazy as music in its own right, and well-worth our recognition of it as such. ("Was it an airplane? Is it a noise? Is it music?") Instead of lamenting the "aural graffiti" scrawled by aircraft, motorized vehicles, espresso machines and other basic sounds of 'civilization' - Cage composed with them.

Combined, these books are giving my ears and brain quite the workout. I'm more aware than ever of just how much noise surrounds me, every moment of the day (right now the crickets outside my parents' back deck in Ohio are screaming - almost eclipsing the sound of the highway traffic a mile or so away.) While I'm finding this hyper-awareness somewhat excruciating, there are also moments when the noise transcends /crosses over into music, with tones, rhythms and lyrical expression. At which point I'm more amused and gratified (majestic / bewildering) than neurotically irritated.

In any case, I think there's plenty that Hempton and Cage have in common, despite their obvious differences. It's in the listening, and the thinking about the listening, and the devotion to the listening, and the writing about the listening, and the caring about the listening. I imagine these two might actually enjoy taking a long walk together through a beautiful forest or down a back city alley - Cage pointing out the sounds of their footsteps and Hempton noting (dejectedly) how many decibels they register at. To which I say, [very very softly,] amen.

"We're passing through time and space. Our ears are in excellent condition." (Cage)

Who knew?

Now I know what kind of sound I make when the cat trots into the room with a squirming mouse in her mouth. Evidently...I scream. Not once, not twice but three times. Like in the cartoons - high-pitched and hysterical. At least I didn't jump up onto a chair, or start swatting blindly with a broom...

In my defense - I'm not scared of mice, it was just very startling when Monkey interrupted our card game to proudly show us her new friend. So startling that I screamed, which startled Monkey who then dropped the mouse, which startled me more so I screamed, which startled the mouse who then started scrambling (with a limp) away, which made me scream again, which startled Monkey again but not enough to prevent her from grabbing her friend and heading downstairs, away from the screams.

Eventually we were able to rescue(?) the mouse from Monkey's jaws and take it outside, in a La Croix box, so it could scurry (with a limp) away to freedom. I doubt it survived the night - it didn't seem long for the world and let's not forget the trio of astute feline hunters living next door. But the box was empty this morning...we'll never know. Back to the screams - I was kind of surprised, myself, by my blood-curdling response to the wriggling little furry guy. Felt a little silly, but also amused, when the whole adventure was over.

As we stood in the kitchen, recalling the Great Mouse Incident of 2009, N. asked me to promise never to make those sounds again. But something tells me there's no guarantee...

P.S.
As you might imagine, there's no scarcity of images on the internet of cats with mice in their mouths. Or on their heads.

P.P.S.
Screaming at the top of your lungs is actually very cathartic. But famous scientists like Dr. Gregory Whitehead have known this for a long time. Check out some of his most impressive research. (number 20)