Outside, construction equipment beats against concrete, cracking like lightning, regular as a pulse. It's been doing it all day. The rhythm creeps into everything, so that it's almost impossible to move without falling into it. I slice a tomato, and I wait for the pound of the machine to slice again. My feet tap along to the beat, as I sit in the old restaurant booth in our living room. My typing is slower. If it weren't for my headache, I might actually enjoy the noise.
This afternoon, I stepped into my apartment courtyard, and I realized I was hearing the sound's echo - not the actual source. The machine itself wasn't that loud, off in the distance, only visible if I stepped onto the pedestrian bridge behind Union Station. If I stood at precisely the right angle, though, the noise was suddenly ten times louder, amplified as it bounced off my building, then bounced again off the building across the courtyard.
This is perfect. The sounds of construction radiating outward, growing louder and louder, until the surrounding neighborhoods are forced to listen, forced to get into the rhythms . . . This is how gentrification moves. This is how it sounds. You get a warning. An alarm. I ran back inside and shut my window, surprised to find I couldn't hear it anymore. My building is sending the noise back.
Comments (1)
This is so weird to read, considering that just an hour earlier I was contemplating writing an entry in my blog about how today feels for me like one of those days when all foreign sounds start to sing. I was eating a salad outside on the usc campus, and some wayward construction noise was teeming right on the periphery of my forebrain as I ate, read, ate, read, and I noticed that I started picking up the noise and hearing melody in it. And that I had done that earlier today too, with a few other noises, downtown and in the library. Turned them into songs without noticing it--until I noticed it.
Posted by wendy | July 21, 2003 6:07 PM
Posted on July 21, 2003 18:07