Paradise, and Everything After

A shot from Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire

Paradise, and Everything After

       Oropendola plops it’s saccharine chorus 
       through the hallowed halls of canopy.
       The sound of drip. The ohm of rushing water.
       Morning breeze through the kapok—samaúma.
       I thought the holy spirit, lovely as it was, was little
       compared to this music but from heaven, one must leap
       with no sight of landing. 

Arrested in concrete - all bus brakes and plane scrape
the air, this cosmopolitan soundscape locks
its scream into the land. A train we've never heard
greets us in a rooster's stead.
They must have laid the tracks in the night. 
Friction and peel, marking asphalt 
like it’s acetate—Michelin and Goodyear with 
the most sung songs of the century.

Whoosh! 
I duck. 
A crow never forgets a face.
This diving threat the best sign yet that I'm 
an eagle. Flap of wings
both of ours
and the city-dwelling angels.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about soundscapes and noise pollution. In elementary school we had a “Yacker Tracker” which was a sound powered-stoplight that spiked to red when we were being too disruptive in the cafeteria. Of course, it became a sign of courage to set it off as much as possible. Our councilperson is working to implement something similar on a stretch of road that is particularly conducive to speeding and revving loud car engines. Here, though, the punishment is a ticket. I have mixed feelings about this kind of noise control.

I listened to a recent conversation with Rob Hopkins, author of the forthcoming How to Fall in Love with the Future, where he talked about “field recordings of the future,” a practice where he’ll record the soundscape of a place that sounds like a desired world One would think this is different for everyone, but, based on a handful of studies, it is surprisingly similar for many:

• Quiet

• Birdsong

• The ability to hear natural things around you (breeze, wind, water)

• Limited transit sound and city noise pollution

In many ways, this is a return to how it used to be. These thoughts all inspired the poem today—a poem about the harshness of sound when returning from a more natural place. The first stanza is a reflection from some time spent in the Amazon rainforest and hearing the Oropendola bird make its incredible song. I think about this bird all the time, but I’ve never really thought about it sounding like the soundscape of the future… until today!

The poet Ilya Kaminsky says that “The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is an invention of the hearing.”

In the great Wings of Desire from Wim Wenders, two angels in the heart of Berlin spend their days listening to conversations. In time, the small details of these conversations become so captivating that one of them considers becoming a human, shedding his wings.

With gratitude,

Mason

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