a lecture on sound

I love the way sound is able to speak--

it speaks on water, it speaks on snow, it speaks on the black hair of my mother.

When a sound is produced in a room, it propagates as pressure waves that travel through the air. Diffraction happens when sound waves happen to encounter obstacles or edges in the room and bend around them, causing changes in the sound's direction and distribution; it is the basis for what allows sound to reach areas that are not in direct line of sight with the sound source. 

We as humans are not endlessly vulnerable and causally ineffectual observers of what happens to us. Like sound waves, we are agents whose perceptions, thoughts, dreams, hopes, and beliefs also change the world and adapt to the obstacles that befound us. We search for passion and emotion that incorporates intrinsic qualities of our subjective experiences that make the experiences what they are, whether it be romance or ambition or humiliation. We need a love that does not obscure the way that we interpret the world, the way we actively shape our understanding of it and of how we fit in, or feel that we don’t.

Sounds are so similar to love in the way they are both so momentary, so unprecedented, so mesmerizing, but mostly because they are so capable of dissipating as rapidly and fleetly as they arrived. Their absences always make the silences so much louder and our yearnings fiercer.