Thursday, December 17, 2009

David Foster Wallace on the Metro

Yesterday, I took the Metro at rush hour. It’s panic-inducing to ride even for a few minutes smashed up against someone in a business suit, one foot stuck under a roller suitcase, one hand gripping a metal pole for balance. I apologized to a woman on crutches who pushed by and tried to ignore the smell of everyone’s sweat souring their cologne and perfume. The train got me where I needed to go, though, and after I struggled out at my stop, I was quite relieved to be heading toward the escalator and back above ground, even if it meant once again braving the freezing winter air.

As I weaved through people on the platform, I passed a woman in her twenties who stood with her mother. The woman wore a stylish black wool coat with a matching hat and high-heeled black boots. She was placing earplugs into her ears. Their white cord trailed down her shoulder. Her mother was bundled in a bulky aquamarine coat and wore a white tasseled hat and pink scarf that covered her chin.

“No, mom,” the younger woman was saying. She continued inserting the earplugs as her voice rose. Then she pulled her mother farther from the train doors. “We’re just going to wait until it’s less crowded. I’m not riding crammed in with a bunch of weirdoes.”

“Jesus Christ,” her mother said. “They’re just people trying to get home.”

Ok, so she wasn’t David Foster Wallace, but she reminded me of Wallace’s commencement speech at Kenyon College. Only, he talks about people in grocery stores and how we forget that the world doesn’t revolve around any one of us.

Later, I went into a neighborhood furniture and knick-knack shop. I wandered among pewter side tables, mirrored dressers, and mahogany shelves, stepping sideways to fit between furniture to get from one end of the store to the other. Colorful vases, used books, and ornate hand mirrors cluttered the shelves and tabletops. Everyone else in the store seemed to know each other. When a man came in, someone shouted across the room and asked how he was.

“I’m happy as a lark,” he said. He sounded like he meant it. He certainly looked happy as he found his way to the used book section and chatted with the employees.

R. has a neighbor who always greets us with “Best day of my life,” in response to being asked how he is. He runs ten to fifteen miles most days, even when icicles hang on the trees, and never seems to frown. I have yet to detect any sarcasm or cynicism from him. Well, maybe when he talks about the Redskins. But even then, he refuses to give up on the team.

One of the employees at the Trader Joe’s near R.’s house is also of a similar nature, as if he were part of the same clan as the neighbor and the man in the furniture store. When customers ask how he is doing, he tells them, “Every day is a holiday.” He also seems to mean it. Every time. I sometimes wonder if he and the neighbor know something I don’t, were let in on some secret of life because it’s in their nature to bounce when they walk.

I don’t know what the answer is, but considering these people got me thinking more about the speech. Here’s the beginning:

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"


—C.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Damn, I am Fine Looking



It has to be one of the most cliched, boring tourist photographs known to travel photography, one that every visitor to Washington, D.C., snaps with their pocket cameras (and beyond), but I must say, my love for D.C., my home, aside, there is something breathless about it.


This was the view last night:




Friday, December 11, 2009

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Synesthesia, Fantasia, Josh Ritter, and Your Favorite Sounds

The book I want to write about is somewhere in a box. Not much else needs to be said about the state of things the last week and a half. I’ll have to discuss that particular story collection another day. Instead, I thought I’d muse on something else that’s been on my mind: sound. The shape and color of sound, the way we write about sound, the way sound infuses you at a concert, and my list of people’s favorite sounds. Also, many of us in the nation’s capital are extremely sad that Tai Shan, the youngest of our pandas, will be leaving. His parents are on loan from China as part of a breeding and conservation effort, but Tai Shan was Born in the USA. His parents are scheduled to return to China next year.

When I talk about the shape and color of sound, I am being literal. As a synesthete, I “see” sounds. I don’t actually see colors that aren’t there, but with every sound, I automatically picture a shape and often a color. I think about this a lot when I’m writing; it enhances my descriptions, though once in a while, someone comments that describing a character’s voice as orange, for instance, is nonsense. However, many other artists and writers are also synesthestes—we experience synesthesia, in which one sense is crossed with another. Synesthesia has many forms, but in my case, I see color with every sense (it seems my visual cortex never shuts off). Taste, touch, sound, letters, numbers, words, ideas, concepts, months, weeks, groups of people or things, pain, pleasure—all of these have color. It helps me organize and remember. It also helps me identify what I’m hearing or what I’m feeling—what instruments are used in a song or what kind of pain is hurting my stomach, for example.

In writing, sound often gets neglected. Luckily, being able to see sounds helps me to think about its textures and subtleties. Even beyond writing, though, what we hear can get taken for granted. Sometimes I like to simply be still and pay attention to everything around me. I start with the smallest details. Sight: The shadows overlapping on the sidewalk, the lady bug crawling on a park bench. Touch: the breeze on my neck, the blades of grass scratching my ankle, the pebbles pressing through my sandal. Sound: distant shouts from a baseball game, the jangle of a dog's collar, someone ripping open a candy wrapper, the clack of heels on concrete, the rustle of newspaper blowing across the road.

I once read that people become addicted to noise, that we stop really hearing what’s around us, that we constantly need noise, have to fill up what we think is silence because we’ve become immune to the smaller sounds. Walking around a city is a constant barrage of noise—sirens, horns, trucks rumbling, bus brakes hissing, more horns and sirens. Yesterday, a cement truck with its rocky load churning and churning followed me for blocks and around a traffic circle. The city is an assault on the senses. And when we urbanites get away from the constant auditory barrage, we often fail to hear the nuances of other sounds. The article I read said that if someone who was used to constant noise were to go camping, for example, it would take a couple of days to be able to “hear” the detailed orchestra of nature. It is too easy to forget this kind of hearing, this kind of listening.

On an afternoon several years ago, during one of my high school track meets, I stood by the track cheering on my teammates. One of our fastest runners stood next to me. “Spikes on a track are my favorite sound,” she said. She meant the spiked shoes runners wear and the sound of those small metal points going up and down against the dirt lanes as the runners raced to the finish line—sweat and speed as sound.

Her words struck me. At fifteen, I had never thought about my favorite sound. People always ask about your favorite color or food or book but nobody ever asks about your favorite sound. So I started to. I began a list and tacked it up on my bulletin board to remind me to consider sound when writing.

Some of our favorite sounds:
Ice skates on ice, slapping mud against a pottery wheel, dried leaves beneath your feet, the scratch and fuzz of an old record playing, logs popping in a fire, typing on an old typewriter, revving a car’s engine, falling snow, the ocean tide, falling rain
The original list contains more, but that’s in a box somewhere, too. Tell me other favorite sounds—I’m always curious what people will say because it often gives some kind of insight into who they are and also because it forces me to think differently about what I hear and listen to. For me, all of these sounds have different shapes, colors, and textures, and in some way, people give this to me when they make me more conscious of sounds to listen for.

I have much more to say about synesthesia as related to sound and the other senses, but that’s a whole different post, and the book I want to refer to is—you guessed it—also in a box. Or, OK, I confess, I put all my books into paper Trader Joe’s bags to make them easier to carry. It’s somewhere in a bag, which somehow seems worse than it being in a box. In any case, I haven’t even touched on the colorful effect of music, but I wanted to mention Josh Ritter’s concert that R. and I attended last week, which was filled with many hues. Attending any kind of musical performance is always fascinating and entertaining because of the show of colors and shapes caused by the music. It’s Fantasia in my head. And Josh was fantastic, especially because you could tell how much fun he was having. The crowd was having it too. He’s also quite funny.

--C.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Amongst the Static (Life)






So, I've entered into a friendly photo competition with some associates, and this week, the first week of the competition, required the inclusion of a tree in the photo. This one was clicked earlier this afternoon. Thoughts?

Friday, December 4, 2009