Biography of a Sound

It began in a moment.

To the minds of those who knew it, it had already lived and died before its presence was registered - it became an instant memory.  But the sound had a life to live, and it had only just got started.

It was born as a blossom of air.  The gaseous embryo shuddered and oscillated as if extending petals into its new world.  Its direction of propagation was encoded into its genes indelibly; save freak gusts of wind or impassable physical structures it would continue its journey as long as it lived.

It was not a soul-less thing.  Its character and temperament were expressed by its timbre, magnitude, frequency, modulation; if you could see, each vibration contained a fingerprint of further oscillations, and another microcosm within each of those.  If any one of those folds or pinnacles was disturbed it would be entirely different.

It had been born well.  The turbulence of its initial hatching settled in a few moments of its life, and it cruised through the air unspoiled and yet folornly unheard.

What it was, was a message.  The information it carried was destined to be heard, but long travels and troubles would need to be surpassed before it could come to rest.

The years as it knew them passed with a dizzying series of events, each one modifying those which would follow.  On one occasion a corner of its being was cleaved off by a stone balcony on a brick building.  The dismembered limb it now dragged behind only lended its message greater weight, like a world-weary wisdom.

Much later in its fleeting life it suffered greatly when its extremeties were dashed hard on the ground beneath it, and also against the walls to its sides.  This had been a terrible time, and even the main body of the thing compressed tightly in morbid sympathy for what had happened.  That compression was not merely a flinch or shudder however, for the compression continued wholesomely when its battered parts rebounded and returned swiftly back towards the torso of the thing, yet again changed for good.

These glancing episodes continued throughout its life, and they did get easier over time.  It started to understand how it in fact needed them, so its message would be believed.

After a while, the approach of its destination could be felt.  As it grew nearer, the thing felt its age ever more and the compression which had begun in the trauma of its younger life began again, this time from head-on irrevocably.  It approached its target with no means to retreat.  It did not resist this new crisis because its most frontal extremeties were already drumming their message into its quarry. 

Soon the waves and loops of its body would follow, and its journey would be complete.

Already - beneath awareness - its quarry was aware of a change in perception.  The outer-reaches of the sound had primed a neural tuning dial and whatever came to follow would be keenly observed. 

The main field of awareness was not yet able to receive this new information but that did not matter.  The most timeless and naturalistic structures would not fail in their receipt of the message at a subliminal level.

Twilight had arrived in the world of the thing.  Its central torso no longer existed as it had.  It coarsed effortlessly into the end which it was given at birth in a sonic splash. 

As its energy was given away and transferred, the soul it had represented was cast out and revealed.

The recipient of the sound was changed forever.  The unnumerable vibrations altered the beholder’s own structures, complexities upon complexities which would exist eternally.