The Sound of Now

I hear what I think are the children whispering to each other in their bunk-beds at a time when they know they should be going to sleep. It is the boy's voice I hear, his energy coiled like an inductor or electromagnet attracting only insomnia. The artist is lying in the bath and if I listen carefully enough to her I think I can hear her turning the pages of whatever it is she is reading, a novel perhaps, or magazine. I can also hear the cars and buses on the major road outside, their drive muffled only slightly by the thin wall of trees. The fridge is making a noise, too, as the refrigerant is pumped through the coils of tubing at the rear. Earlier, all I could hear was the sound of the artist's materials enjoying the surface of paper on board, a sound interjected every now and then by the dissatisfied sigh of the artist, or her attempt to hunt opinion. A motorbike rips past. It could be riderless for all I know. Where we lived before, which was just next door, the young man's motorbike was always being stolen. A large truck would pull up, usually at about four or five in the morning apparently, and crack the code and with several people hoist the machine into their vehicle and spirit their hot-wheeled booty away. I can still hear whispering. My curiosity gets the better of me and I step across the wooden floorboards and peer like a nurse into a ward of whispers. It is only our son who is whispering, as our daughter is asleep. (I can hear the reassuring filling and emptying of her 8 year old lungs.) When I ask our son what it is he is doing he looks up at me from the thick shopping catalogue on the bed and says, 'I'm ticking what I want.' Bunk-bed shopping: it's like window shopping only you can't shout about it. On my way back to the laptop I can hear the central heating. It is a slow hum and how I imagine the sound of monotony to be. I listen to my fingers tapping the keys again. It is the sound of a galloping horse whose hooves have been made tiny, and replaced with leather padding. Silently, most silently, I look across at the artist's two pieces on the wall. The figures within each stare back. On this night of many sounds they are the non-conformists. One of them looks at me with precisely the kind of perseverance we need in order to ensure the work is shown. On cue, the artist reappears, bathed and dried and wanting to make some tea. Moments later, I can hear the water in the kettle begin to boil. 'I'm hot,' says our son.

The sights and sounds of the ups and downs

I have been in the garden brushing away the flies, ladybirds, and wasps, while the artist works on a kind of dream rendition indoors. Trying to write with the children playing is not difficult when compared to some people's distractions in the world, and in truth I can hear the traffic more than the children, motorbikes mostly, and await with well-honed foreboding the sound of a high-speed crash. This is not unfamiliar territory. It is perhaps the same with the Middle East, Persian Gulf, North Africa and Central Asia. We all hear something. We know the situation is bad. And some of us fear it will get much worse. Also, with a kind of well-honed foreboding we await the sound of a high-speed crash. (Nuclear? No, we dismiss.) Which is why as well as writing I have also been reading a book today by a man I met on a number of occasions and with whom I once gave uncredited advice. His latest volume covers one of the countries in the present fragmentation, the strongest perhaps, and though I have only just begun it I can see already the problem I have with my own ignorance. I can never for example seem to grasp fully why things have to fall apart. Over two thousand years ago these people were the most sophisticated on the planet. Renowned for their rectitude and wisdom, they were hunters, poets, and musicians. Indeed for a while they would use art rather than weaponry as their principal means of persuasion. So what went wrong? Did the flies, ladybirds, and wasps get too much for them in the end? Were they obliged to withdraw indoors? Today once again we have some of the so-called most sophisticated people on the planet, on both sides some might argue, people famously keen - again, on both sides - on rectitude, thinking they have the answer, and maybe some of them do. But what can you really do when you hear a motorbike drive too fast? What can you do when you see a wasp on someone’s nose? Warn them? Strike out and risk being bitten yourself? Or, like a woman I met on a two-masted brigantine once, keep calm until it passes? I have a friend who would know. He is cleverer than me and writes about insects well. Hang on. Wait. Another motorbike. (A beat.) Phew. No. It’s OK. (Actually I thought there was a wasp, too.) Wait a moment, shall I just go inside and listen to the news instead?