sounds…
I wish you were here to hear them. I wish that I could record it in the exact way that it enters my mind. I desperately wish I could.
________
On a bus: listening to a song with my old, well-traveled headphones. The music, layered with the sound of the roaring engine and the incessant honking of the air horns.
The bus station: A woman uses a broom made of long, dry sticks of straw, sweeping it across the pitted concrete floor. Pairs of men and families of varying sizes talk quietly in their chairs as they wait to make their ways elsewhere. The layer of chatter covers the area. The sound of bus engines starting increases and the car horns that you would only expect to hear in India blare.
The church: The music sometimes has the beat of something I would expect in a club. The backbeat can be quite intense. People dance and sing loudly. Microphones and speakers help the sounds carry for a distance.
– OR –
The sound of a singers and a single drum. The drum is being played with a single stick and a hand, the sound being a pattern of syncopated rhythms that moves with the music. The singers are not necessarily in a key that my brain recognizes, but they are somehow together. The foreign words describing something that we would make major, but is minor in this place. It’s imperfection makes it even more beautiful.
The kitchen: metal plates and cups slide around on the kitchen table, being passed out for a meal. The sound of metal spoons stirring curry in metal pots. The sizzling of herbs and spices with newly added water. Vegetables, reducing in size, but increasing in flavor and capsaicin level.
The common room: filled with laughter at Christmas movies, shouting about highly competitive games of Monopoly, and typing on a computer as people write blogs just like this.
The sound of a team that has been eating rice for every meal deciding what they will cook for themselves. Their discussion is muffled by the sound of the wind through the open windows of the auto and the whirring of the engine. They scream when the word pancakes is uttered by someone in the group. The excitement in their voices is contagious.
The sound of someone praying in a foreign language. It is passionate and somber, yet powerful. It comes with a feeling of reverence and it captures the attention of those around. In the background, others pray in their own languages, all to the same God. One guitar player finger picks in the background, the chords moving and changing as the voices do.
_________
My whole life has revolved around sound. Before kindergarten, I heard my brothers playing the piano and french horn. I started playing soon after and learned to use my ears to figure out the musical puzzles around me. I spent all of my time in and out of school learning what sounds mean and how they form connections between themselves and the outside world. Sound brings me joy. Sound shows me pain. Sounds gives me clues to what is going on in the world around me. My biggest fears and my greatest joys come from the sounds around me.
Sounds are everywhere. In “August Rush,” August says, “Listen- Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere: in the wind, in the air, in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.”
You know what else that applies to in this life of mine? God.
“Listen. Can you hear [Him]? [God.] I can hear [Him] everywhere: in the wind, in the air, in the light. [He’s] all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen.”
Recently, I’ve related to God most during my times of silence. The times where I stop making noise and listen to what’s around me. I open myself, stop doing what I’m doing, and just look around.
God is in the people singing off-key. God is in the roaring of the engine that gets us from one place to the other. God is in the laughter of my teams.
It’s a precious way that God has been urging me to slow down and focus on the small things in front of me. He’s requiring me to listen carefully and learn to relax into the environment He’s put me in.
God is in the sound, but he’s also in the silence, and I’m learning to appreciate the latter just as much.
