The War on Silence

[mnaz]

That's us.

[sasha]

even in the early days of lockdown, I couldn't get a clean recording of marsh birds without a passenger jet scrawling aural graffiti over the sky

[mnaz]

Yes. I remember how I took a job as caretaker at an old placer gold mining camp in the Mojave Desert, in part to see what it was like living with desert silence. And then the dirt bikes came. Almost 200 miles from LA wasn't far enough out ... BLAAAAAARP, POP - POP - POP ... And I remember one of my journal entries: "... but then a small aircraft annoyed the sky." Ah well, not sure if our brains were ever equipped to handle total silence anyway ...

(Btw, I think I'm going to steal "aural graffiti" ... That's great!)

[sasha]

Then there are the snow machines. You can hear them from a mile away, buzzing & snarling like an angry wolf pack - and you can smell their exhaust long after they've roared past. But they tamp down the snow on the rail trails, making them passable on foot, so I somewhat grudgingly accept their noxious presence much as I grudgingly accept our biting insects as essential parts of a larger ecosystem.

aural graffiti[/i]" ... That's great!)

I thank you, sir!