When you’re falling in a forest

And there’s nobody around

Do you ever really crash or even make a sound?

Lyrics from Waving Through A Window – Dear Even Hanson.

It’s a good song –

You should go listen to it.

But it’s the last word in this particular phrase

That I am…

Obsessed with.

Sound.

How all-encompassing that word is.

And indeed, is that not sound itself?

All-encompassing?

Sound is one thing

Maybe the only thing

That written word does no justice to.

Believe me.

I have tried.

I was a song writer! I am a poet!

I sing! I play guitar!

I laugh and I scream and I sob and I shout –

I am a being of sound,

Solely because I am human.

But that is not just sound.

I create sound unwillingly, sometimes.

Footsteps

Breathing

Movement

A laugh broken free

A pillow-muffled cry

Are also sound.

But not the same

As before.

Even now,

Typing in the dark

Using memory to find letters on a keyboard

Sound is surrounding me

When I am trying to be quietest.

And inhuman sound is like that the most.

All-encompassing, I mean.

The easiest to ignore

But the loudest sound.

Bird call

Leaves brushing together

Waves

Fire crackle

Again, movement.

But world-wide, this time.

Maybe that’s why

Everything on Earth

Fights so hard to make sound in the first place.

The smallest insects

Pressing their wings together

Buzz. Sound.

Car horns

Loud and often uncalled for

Honk. Sound.

Whale song

Haunting and dangerous.

Sound.

Burrowing, running, blinking, braying, whispering, scuttling, rushing, growling, barking, howling, calling, flying.

Is their sole purpose

To drown out the Earth’s own sound?

Because I listed all of those

Sound words.

And I can list a thousand more.

Music, sigh, bubble-pop, screech, page-turn, break, rustle, clap, roll, ball-bounce, snap, click, tap, shatter, step, flick, clock-tick –

But I can’t tell you what the world sounds like

When nothing else is making sound.

Would it be silent?

No.

It can’t be.

Right?

Sound

In our universe

Is only outdone

By light.

But light can die.

We have predicted the very end of our galaxy, of space-time itself

On the understanding

That light dies.

But does sound?

I know that sound can pause –

I can control that with a button in my hand,

If I wish.

But that is not all sound.

It is never

All sound.

Think about it!

Hold your breath, it stops the very sound that means you are living.

But the birds call on.

Block your ears, you can’t hear ANYTHING.

But there is your heartbeat.

Do everything in your power

To stop sound

For a moment.

Do it, I dare you. Everything,

But someone

Somewhere

Is listening to music.

Sound continues.

But light dies.

I think the world makes sound.

I don’t think the world needs to prove to us that it makes sound

By letting us hear it.

I think the world knows

That sound doesn’t end.

Empty rooms echo for a reason.

Evie Taylor

Year 11 Student

Theatre Studies