Noise, noise, noise

Sound is something that's all around us. It's not even something that you have to think about. Its incredible when you realize there are constant vibrations assaulting your ears at all times and our brain has the ability to tune it out, filter sounds and discard "excess" stimulation and cut through the din and focus on important things. So when I was asked to go into two different public places and focus on this din, just to hear the things that I tune out, I was quite interested. 

I was riding the bus back from school on Thursday afternoon, and as on most days, I had my headphones in because I don't actually don't usually care to listen to other people's idiotic conversations. However about a minute into the bus ride I started to think about this very assignment and paused my music to casually observe the noise around me. As I sat there and closed my eyes, I couldn't believe some of the things that I heard. Two girls a few seeks in front of me were having a conversation about a friend of their's who was dating a guy from Honduras, and they didn't like this very much. My window was cracked and the sound of wind was rushing in. There was something loose in the back of the bus was banging against the wall, and was making an incredible racket. The whole bus seemed to the creaking and groaning. The engine had one note as it strained to come up through the gears. Countless horns were going off all around us (why does everyone in Wilmington honk their horn constantly?). The seats on the bus creaked as people shifted in their seats, faux leather is far from being a quite material. When I opened my eyes I was amazed (and slightly thankful that I usually am listening to music) at how much noise I usually tune out. It was so noisy, and chaotic, it's enough to make one feel quite uncomfortable. 

The second chance I took to observe the sound that I usually ignore was at work. My place of employment I'll choose not to name (but I do hate it). I work in a grocery store, and it maybe be one of the largest repositories of strangeness that I've ever visited. On top of that, it's a really, really weird place. I was on break, and took an opportunity to close my eyes (trying to cure the headache incurred from working with the public) and focus on the sound around me. The first thing I noticed was the constant humming and buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. It sounded as if ten thousand hornets were trapped inside them and they were about to burst out. Just outside the door is the stocking room, I heard the thunderous beeping of the forklift being thrown in reverse, the sound of it's rubber tires sticking to the floor, the whoosh of it's hydraulics as it moved in position to grab something from up high. This symphony of moving heavy things was broken by the shriek of a frantic voice calling for help at the front end. After that, the double doors to the storage room flew open with a thunderclap of heavy plastic and a gust of air flowing into the space. Usually when I'm on my break however, I'm on my phone. And I notice none of these things that I've just mentioned. 

After looking of Balzas' article, some good points were made about how sound impacts us in relation to the cinema. I particularly liked her observation about how powerful silence is, something I didn't quite have the opportunity to experience when I was doing my sound observations. In the space of the cinema, the sudden onset of silence has an incredibly powerful effect. An eeriness conveyed in cinema. Film is the only single medium that can make us experience silence, something literature, radio, not even the theatre can convey. This isn't something that I had perviously considered, but a well stated point. Another element of sound in film that can emphasize is to make it asynchronous. As Balzas states, the most powerful way that a director can highlight the important of a sound and make it stand out and demand to be notice, it to divorce the relationship between image and sound. Asynchronous sound sticks out like a sore thumb, it doesn't belong, it's odd. It makes us feel uncomfortable. In this crazy world, we are always trying to make sense out of something, even sounds in a series of images whipping by at twenty four frames per second.