Soundscapes and Birdsong
I enjoy noise. Doesn’t matter which. Music is best, but conversation can be better with the right person. As long as it’s not nothing, because silence can give off a brutally fickle screech.
Much of my childhood was spent on the tenth floor along one of the busiest arteries of Brooklyn. At the far end was a hospital and beyond that, Coney Island. It didn’t occur to me until much later that it was called Ocean Parkway because it began where the Atlantic did, and not because the constant hum of traffic sounded like waves crashing onto shore.
Only the loudest sounds made it up as high as I was. Ambulance sirens and car horns peppered the monotony in the ever flowing traffic. Occasional high pitched brakes squealed and sent my mother to the window. Everyone held their breath to see if the skid ended to the crash of broken glass. I felt bad about the tinge of disappointment I couldn’t help when there wasn’t one.
In the horrid quiet of my insomniac nights, the F train rattled over the elevated trestle that ran above the old trolley tracks a few blocks away. The night sky was temporarily lit up as sparks flew from the third rail. It was even more thrilling when you were making out on the bleachers in the park and the sky flashed as the smooth chug chug gave way to the high whine of brakes squealing into the station. Stand clear of the closing doors, indeed.
As high as I was, physically and otherwise, background noises slid into the ether like dust particles in the sun — tiny motes belonging to a larger whole I couldn’t fathom. From my bedroom window I caught glimpses of birds heading out to sea, flying south in formation. Without a limb to linger on, they were only satisfying eye candy.
“I hate pigeons,” my mother always said. “They shit everywhere.” Did she think they should use designated spots only? “And songbirds are assholes.”
She was very opinionated. About birds, drivers from New Jersey, and my ability to fuck things up.
Besides my parents’ arguing, there was always a sound to latch onto. The crank of an elevator, the raucous family of neighbors, the whooping of the people above you, or the backing up of a distant truck a few blocks away.
My friends and I wandered the streets and took in the catcalls spanning our audio field, half enjoying, half petrified. We sat on benches in parks letting the noise come to us, trying and failing to avoid permanent injury.
I dated a guy who screamed up to my window as if he were Romeo and I Juliet, but his words were swallowed up on the jet stream. He worked the printing press at the Daily News and had a premarital sex complex that seems as quaint now as news does on paper.
When I moved outside Boston for college, traffic demands were replaced by birds who came to sing outside my window. I put headphones on and turned the volume up, their chittering trill burning my senses. Instead, I tuned into the noise of excited friends on my dorm hall floor and concepts that sent my mind reeling. I can still hear the endlessly flushing toilets in the communal bathroom, and the sandpaper strike of a match as we debated our unknowingly fictional futures.
In the early 1990s I moved to Los Angeles and kept the music up full blast, despite the neighbor’s complaints. Until I met my husband. Finally, after all those years of crying out, my mind quieted for precious moments within his sensory sensitivity.
Suddenly there was birdsong. Loud and at it early. I tried to wait in bed, but their chatter was incessant. What were they saying?
Soon enough I was too busy having babies to listen to anything but the sound of my sons’ needs while searching for ways to keep their screaming quiet. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d encouraged them to yell at the top of their lungs. Everyone should.
The sparrows became my enemy, waking the kids up every single morning with their happy chatter and endless gossip I couldn’t follow. My husband talked me out George Washingtoning down the cherry tree on the lawn. I’m grateful for that. I would have regretted it.
With the kids away now, there isn’t that much to listen to. My inner voice has moved from an angry, petrified screaming to a contended, grateful resignation, allowing for the elderly avian fairy dust to blow through.
A friend of mine suction cupped a feeder to her window. Small birds flew in and flew out. It looked interesting, and just distracting enough to get behind. Haven’t they been the constant all along? My hearing isn’t that great anymore and I’m up at 5:00 am with the roosters anyway. Why not try my hand?
Three window, two suet, and a giant house feeder later, I’ve figured out how to recognize a chickadee’s chirr from the warble of a red bellied sapsucker. I listen to the animated gangster chatter of the recently returned goldfinches. The white-breasted nuthatch thrills me to pieces when it lands on the suet feeder I’ve almost fallen out of my window in order to refill. At least only one of my bird baths is heated. I haven’t lost it entirely.
Out here in the country everyone loves their mourning doves, who are not exactly pigeons, but close enough to make me wonder if my mother could have found a softer spot for them.
Sometimes the world delivers a dissonance that feels unbearable, and other times I’ve been able to scratch through that discord and come out the other end with a sweet, exciting birdsong all my own. It’s just a matter of quieting things in order to hear what is right beyond your window.
