Hear the beloved country

[igenlode]

I was listening to one of those generic CD sets that purports to present an easy-listening selection to represent all the parts of the world -- 'the sound of Africa', 'the sound of Arabia', 'the sound of India', the sound of Australia', etc -- the sort of thing that nobody would ever have any serious listening use for save as a background soundtrack, and happened to have picked the Africa disc as probably more accessible than than Asian music. And as a lead-in and tailpiece track, someone had assembled what was evidently supposed to be a soundscape of the idea of Africa: tomtoms beating, wild animal calls, the pounding of tropical rain, lions roaring and exotic bird cries.

That was months ago now, but it occurred to me to wonder what sort of soundscape I would pick to represent my own country, and I keep assembling ideas. What are the sounds of England for me?

Water. You need water -- not rain, unless it's the spatter of rain against window-glass, for English rain isn't loud or intrusive, and it doesn't drum on parched dry earth. But there would have to be the sounds of the sea: the rattle and suck of pebbles drawing back in the undertow, the long hiss of waves running in across sand, the pounding of winter waves against the breakwater. And of fresh water: the chuckle of a busy stream running swiftly down and the trickle of water into a still pool.

The sounds of animals heard faintly across the fields, not wild animals, but the familiar domesticated echoes of the countryside -- the shrill bleat of a lamb and the call of its mother, the distant lowing of a cow, the indignant quacking of ducks. And birdsong -- not all of them, but a few that stand for memories. The chatter of a hedge full of sparrows; the blackbird, full and sweet and more melodious than the nightingale; the echoing cries of crows, the piercing voices of swifts and the far-off summer ascent of the lark, circling in a tumble of piping notes. Grasshoppers in long grass. A dog barking in the distance, excited.

The sound of the wind in the trees in an autumn gale, and the soft stirring of the branches in summer. The endless dry hiss of the reeds.

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

My friend, you have the soul of a poet.

[igenlode]

My friend, you have the soul of a poet.

*immodestly* I know.
Well, I was a poet, for years. It helps with writing fiction — of the kind I write, at least.

Too much like hard work these days... though I'm still tempted by the Heine, having seen the 'Oxford Lieder' make such a botch of it. But it simply can't be done in the original rhyme-scheme or (probably) metre. And I have another translation project that has been left lying in favour of Arctic Raoul for far too long :-(

[betweensunandmoon]

I used to write poetry, most of which was your typical angsty teenage stuff. A lot of it's still up on FictionPress as a testament to why I should never attempt to do so again. :P

[igenlode]

So what are the representative sounds of your country to you, if you wanted to give a foreigner an idea of what it was like?

[betweensunandmoon]

That's too monumental a task for one person, but I can tell you what my small portion of it sounds like.

The steady drumbeat of rain. Water rushing over falls and rapids. Wind whistling through the trees. Bird calls, a few of them sweet, most of them loud and shrill--everyone has an opinion, everyone has something to say. Dogs barking and howling, warning off intruders. Crickets chirping and bonfires crackling on summer nights.

Not as nice as yours, I fear. But that was fun.

[igenlode]

Well, you managed to make it sound indefinably 'foreign' to me, so clearly an accurate evocation :-)

(Crickets and fireflies at night are one of the things that always mark out an American author unthinkingly using an English setting; we just don't have them, any more than we have bluebirds [spoiler alert: the (US-penned) wartime hit "There'll be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover" indicates a happy future a little more fantastical than the writers probably intended!] Our grasshoppers sing in hot sunshine, and our glow-worms are poor little rare creatures that crawl around at ground level eating slugs and snails, rather than flying in dancing hordes on summer nights.)

[butterflydreaming]

Since I grew up in suburbs, for me, it's city sounds, slightly at a distance, the way I would hear cars on the road from my backyard. Tires splashing up winter's heavy rain. Mockbirds when the sun breaks through. Mourning doves and the faded noise of big rigs honking. Of course, the beach: seagulls, and the white noise of the waves drowning out music from the stores nearby. It's the crickets outside my window in summer, and the Santa Ana winds billowing gusts through scrub oak and sycamore trees.

[igenlode]

I was deliberately excluding man-made sounds from mine because it didn't seem in the spirit of the original CDs -- though come to think of it the beaters of the tomtoms are human! But I did consider it -- none of the sounds (an ice-cream van, a snatch of brass band or roundabout music, the rattle and sway of an express train passing at high speed) really seemed quintessential enough. They date very quickly.

I did wonder if I should have included seagulls!