Herein I will recount today's STRANGE EARLY-MORNING SONIC EXPERIENCE.
So I was awakened at 5 AM this morning by what seemed to me to be a very loud, repeated musical noise emanating, seemingly, from the air around me. I would describe it as two brief chords from a Simon and Garfunkle song (by which I mean, Simon and Garfunkle singing) followed by a bright chord played by a duo of french horns. I was briefly worried in a half-asleep way that the Second Coming was happening.
As I became more awake and the sound repeated again, I figured out that it was a remarkably musical train whistle, probably emanating from the tracks down by Main Street. By how, you ask, did they sound so loud and so near?
I WILL EXPLAIN USING MY 9TH GRADE PHYSICS-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE OF SOUND WAVES.
Oakland is a street bounded on one side by close-together houses on an embankment and on the other side by close-together houses at street-level, essentially what we people who have no formal science training like to call a "SOUND TUBE." Oakland dead-ends at my apartment building. More specifically, at my window. Even more specifically, at my gigantic plate glass window that covers an entire wall of my room. This window acts as a giant ear drum, essentially, that catches and amplifies all the sounds that come down Oakland, EXCLUSIVELY FOR MY BENEFIT. This allows me to be awoken at strange hours of the night, horrified that Simon and Garfunkle and a small brass ensemble are in my room.
IT'S SCIENCE
So I was awakened at 5 AM this morning by what seemed to me to be a very loud, repeated musical noise emanating, seemingly, from the air around me. I would describe it as two brief chords from a Simon and Garfunkle song (by which I mean, Simon and Garfunkle singing) followed by a bright chord played by a duo of french horns. I was briefly worried in a half-asleep way that the Second Coming was happening.
As I became more awake and the sound repeated again, I figured out that it was a remarkably musical train whistle, probably emanating from the tracks down by Main Street. By how, you ask, did they sound so loud and so near?
I WILL EXPLAIN USING MY 9TH GRADE PHYSICS-LEVEL KNOWLEDGE OF SOUND WAVES.
Oakland is a street bounded on one side by close-together houses on an embankment and on the other side by close-together houses at street-level, essentially what we people who have no formal science training like to call a "SOUND TUBE." Oakland dead-ends at my apartment building. More specifically, at my window. Even more specifically, at my gigantic plate glass window that covers an entire wall of my room. This window acts as a giant ear drum, essentially, that catches and amplifies all the sounds that come down Oakland, EXCLUSIVELY FOR MY BENEFIT. This allows me to be awoken at strange hours of the night, horrified that Simon and Garfunkle and a small brass ensemble are in my room.
IT'S SCIENCE
Leave a comment