I had to close all of the windows to record some narration. Even then, the sound of Nika and Theo playing downstairs made their way to the microphone. I wandered over to the balcony and watched them, as they struggled to catch some animal in a corner of the dead-end street we live on. Maybe a mouse, or a tiny lizard, a snake, a great beetle - I have no idea, but they were all about it, voices lifting like they were watching the best movie ever made, popcorn flying, seats wobbling.
At first I assumed they were brothers, mostly because I played with my own brother the same way - a world of sticks and weeds, endless afternoons in our shorts concocting battles and competitions, the rules ever-changing, the rips of laughter, the squirt gun betrayals, that playing long into the night without a care in the world. N corrects me, and explains that Theo is really Nika’s neighbor, and they are best friends.
The whole street is a sort of opera, with the sound of exotic bugs that tumble through the windows, dive-bombing me at my little desk, all glittery green with wings that sound like tiny chainsaws. Eventually they find their way back out, a perfect fade to silence that is punctuated by the roar of a motorcycle in the courtyard, gunning its way back home or grinding away with a throaty rumble, all talk. Then, the early squeak of the clotheslines that stretch from one apartment across to the next, a web of old ropes that carry underwear and sheets, tiny shirts, bath towels, the story of an entire family in the low wind, flapping around as helpless as anything, but always coming home in one piece, never dropping to the ground. I see the women in the windows, with those quiet faces as the clothespins are clipped in place, stern and kind, every one of them the Mona Lisa.
There are early birds, their chirps like a low boil on a great pot of soup, sweet and short as the sun comes up. Later, there are some crows - I never see them, but they are in the background of every recording I make here. And then the church bells, on the hour when you catch them, like planets in orbit. The roar of a taxi, the grumble of a big Mercedes trying to turn in the narrow lane, huffing and puffing as it corners and finally roars off.
Ah, and the rain. It does not just patter. There are spouts on the roof that lead down to the ground and the rain drills down them with great force, more like a strange percussion set, a messy rhythm, a forever solo, bing bang bing until you somehow fall asleep.
And now, the sound of my wife in the shower, the most perfect noise in the universe.
a little opera
Beautiful ❤️
I heard every sound. ☔️