Music In The Air

Music is in the air, if we stop to hear it. And in the street, and the cornfield. Listen to it, and then point it out to your children. I was just in downtown Chicago for a few days, downtown by the river, and the sounds of that great city are the symphony of modern civilization.

Sirens, of course---a fire truck, police car, and an ambulance each has its own musical pitch and rhythm. Honking, as annoying as it can be, is music. Notice the rhythm of trains on the tracks, and how they sound different far away and up close. Buses have a different rumbling sound than cars... If you can find the music in construction it becomes more tolerable—drilling, hammering, hollering.

Now back at home in Iowa, there are different pieces being played: birds, crickets, geese overhead, the wind, and being a small town, the whistle of the train night and day. In the suburbs there will be different sounds—lawnmowers, cars and motor cycles, kids playing outside. Then there’s the song of the ocean---waves, gulls, wind--like in the picture above of Cape Cod.

There is a wonderful book called “The Listening Book” by W. A. Mathieu. He describes the day when he discovered that there was more in the air than he’d ever heard before. “I remember the amazement in realizing--the more you listen, the more you hear . . . the delight in registering sounds that have always been present but that I’d never heard. The ecstasy of knowing this is a life-long experience, infinitely expandable, basically musical.”

Here is someone’s take on the musical sounds of New York City:



Enjoy the music of life that is all around, and teach your children to hear it too.

Sweet dreams,
Jane