The Soundwalk

The time is 3:00 in the afternoon, and the neighborhood is Midtown East. Here, sound is layered with a rich diversity. I can best describe it as a loud hum that cakes the streets, on which sounds a balanced cacophony of activity, and accented with more specific audial details.

The background—or keynote—is a soft, whistling hum; it sound like a constant, windy exhale, but only a loud whisper. Walking up Park Avenue at 50^th Street, it seems inescapable, and once I try to focus on it, my ears feel it as the shade of brown you get when you mix together every shade of paint. The skin of this layer is wavy and kinetic: a hundred car engines revving and stalling, coming and going, always being replaced in a pattern of rise and fall.

My favorite audial detail is the honking. A car horn may be heard honking, on average, about every five seconds, though usually they come in groups. Sometimes the honking is close by (the taxi cabs always honk in A-flat), but mostly, honks are peppered and heard from—what I can only guess—is a distance of over a hundred feet. These far honks have no sharpness. To me, their gentle echo almost sounds pleasant, like a soft burst of music: quiet, soft, and foggy around the edges.

Then there are the pedestrians. When one passes by, his or her shoes usually make a muted clap against the pavement, in a steady, independent percussive beats that fade in and out.

            The sound hierarchy of Midtown East characterizes it as what it is—that is, a hubbub of motion and life, in its impatient and bustling state.