If we take a moment to shut our eyes and let our hearing acquire the front row seats of our earth-sized auditorium, a profound shift in experience happens, though however slight it may feel. The sounds around you become focused – almost as if they are directed at you. The rattling and bombastic construction of a building where families will live becomes alive behind your eyes. You can see, even with your eyes shut, the hardened and gruff man reflecting orange and green under the baking sun hamming away at rebar. You can imagine what the street by your home is like just by the sound of the cars passing, stopping, and then driving away. The fly zipping and buzzing around your aural desert of an office is felt and seen with such precision. That fly despite its small size is enormous in its annoyance and resilience to your rolled up printer paper.
What we hear can move us deeply. Our child’s cry and beckoning strikes a chord deep within us, even when asleep, to tend to our most precious boy or girl. We soothe their fear with our song and watch as their eyes relax, their call for comfort die down, and grimace transform into a gracious smile. The feeling of your partner expressing their endearment for your anniversary is heard not only by their saccharine locution but in the spaces where tears fall and heavy breaths take the sonic stage. Music will reduce the strongest person to tears and inspire the weakened to conquer the lowly voice inside their mind that shackles them to the monolith of despair.
The sounds of one’s ever-changing environment are as powerful as the waves they embody. Sound will instill fear, sound will unite, sound will release pressure and force sadness to the top, sound’s ghost – silence – will haunt, and sound will coat one in aural riches and bring about boundless joy. I love working with something I cannot see and I love how I can optimize and embellish its qualities to help a business’ or organization’s project arrive at life. Sound is something you will never truly be able to see – but without its presence, the listener’s spirit will not be moved at the depths which sound makes its cosmic impact.
