Water, the scientists tell us, reaches its maximum density before it freezes, at 3.98° centigrade. This is why, they tell us, ice floats. Now the question before us is, perhaps, why does one sound seem to float easily above another?
“The custom-built, 50-ton blower was situated in an adjacent chamber, separated from the waiting area by a long corridor. The Æolor blower was 21 feet high, 16 feet long, and 13 feet wide, and it contained two colossal lengthwise paddles which rotated to draw air in one side and out the other.”
“My God,” thought the Commander, peering into the heaving black chaos, “Where am I? Who am I?” He waited for the beacon’s beam to seep through the fog, still unable to work out why, the entire day of their departure, he had been dogged by anxiety. A. Sokurov, ‘Confession’
The wind and thunder of hooves, with a sound the color of blood, swept them in from the East, unstoppable. They took each naked settlement, one after another, a flood of vanquished earth. The town bells pleaded mercy until there was no one left to ring them.
Impressions. Photographed in a series of fleeting glimpses, the pastoral landscape of southern Kazakhstan between Shymkent and Almaty quickly passes and slowly darkens as evening falls.
The circle seems beyond fundamental: of it, everything is made. Through it, everything is seen. By means of it, all is heard and sensed. The circle, in enclosing an area, empty of other marks, is used to signify zero, naught, null. … more
Fascinated by the richness of the sounds that accompany images of flight in war movies made in the U.S.S.R., particularly the Bojevoj Kinosbornik series, and Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s 1935 Aerograd, I pieced together an atmosphere based on exemplary fragments.
1. Spontaneously, travellers in Medzhybizh recall a song from the film Austeria (The Inn). 2. The midrash in Uman containing the tomb of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. 3. In Trieste, a man prays as a woman mops the floor at the Cattedrale di San Giusto. 4. Morning services and bells at Odessa’s Cathedral of the Transfiguration.
Although clear on visual inspection that the wave form is rich in undulations, on playback, the source file for this filecast offers only silence. So I made variants of it, lowering it by two, three, four, and six octaves. I present them here as a chorus, together with a few added sound effects.
The Czech words for “lightning and thunder” aptly characterize the outdoor city-wide sound environment replayed in Prague every year at Silvestr — or New Year’s Eve. Here is a recording, beginning just at midnight, of what it sounded like most recently, with my best wishes for the coming year.
The borderland between countries can create an odd feeling as one passes through a place where bureaucracy and armed guards interrupt the free sensation of moving down the road. Psychologically, we may feel the need to steel ourselves for the leap from the commonplace to the unknown.
Foreboding hung heavy as the struggling train juddered and screed on the tortured rails, first this side of the mountain stream, then that, being forced at intervals to cross on worrisome bridges. A wan gibbous moon floated in the mist, deftly evading the black graspless arms of trees. When they finally reached the city, night had fallen.