Monday, December 6, 2010

The Little Things in Life: Music to my Ears

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Leopold Stokowski

Music is a funny thing. Essentially, music is just a rhythm. It can be a rhythm accented with words or instruments. It can be a beat kept by the tapping of a palm onto the side of a leg. And in everyone's life, there is music--there is a personal rhythm. The chime of a cash box, a baby's happy squeal, or the roar of an ignited engine can all reverberate with a person's personal rhythm. These little notes and tunes perk us up unknowingly; they help us keep pace with our day. These are our favorite sounds...

My favorite sounds:

1. The flutter of a camera shutter
2. The swoosh of a net in a silent gym
3. The crack of a bat in a huge stadium
4. The pitter-patter of Willoughby's little feet as he rounds our bed... followed by the silence while he prepares to jump onto the bed
5. The pop of a peanut jar when you first open it
6. The clumsy speech of little French kids and their cute accents (I once heard two little French toddlers bantering at the New Release aisle in Blockbuster. They were so cute... toddlers have a way of speaking where the words seem too big for their mouths and so words seem to fall out of their mouths rather than be spoken. When those big clumsy words are in French, the kids are even cuter).
7. Laughter... some people have trademark laughs which are the best. Clint has the silent laugh where only his shoulders move. My mom gets almost cackly. Manda has an adorable giggle that makes me wonder if she laughed the exact same way when she was a kid. And Lisa always starts her laughs with a big 'O' face. These are little reasons I will pretty much do or say anything if it invokes a laugh.
8. The clicking of laptop keys
9. Gwen's whiny meow
10. The whir of our KitchenAid mixer's motor

What are some of the rhythm-keepers in your life? What are your favorite sounds?

No comments:

Post a Comment