Balmy Sounds, Murderous Noises

I’ve been carrying the tale about sounds for weeks now; it has been ripening in my thoughts, swimming in my brain cells, throbbing in my pulse. I love it, but I am still scared of it. It craves to be written down, but the pen keeps on turning it in other directions. It hides from words.

While I was living among talkative friends, it was silent. Now, that I can hear only my own voice, it started to stir deep inside. I’m waiting for it to appear attired with words. I don’t mind if it will stutter or stumble, just let it sound.

May it be that God created sounds first? “Let there be a voice in silence,” he thought. His thoughts became the wind, the breeze, the gentle whiff, the tempestuous blast, the swish, the sigh. 

Then he thought out water. The murmur of seas started, the thunder of waves, splashes falling silent. Sound started the springs, the brooks, the creeks, the rivulets and the rivers. Lightning struck from the clouds, thunder was rolling, rain was swishing, dropping and rustling. A waterfall was pouring down on rocks, falling with thunder from cliffs, then bubbling.

Then God thought out the sound of the trees, in long contemplation. He thought out pines and leafy trees, in forests and standing alone. He thought fruit-trees into gardens, walnut trees beside houses, poplars reaching high, different kinds of swishes and rustlings, cracks and creaks to all of them, for winter, for night and for the dawn. He thought out bushes, too, and a vineyard with swishing breeze, and grasses on the meadow with tiny rustlings. And jasmine and acacia to sigh with their fragrance.

Then he thought out insects: crickets with chirping, bees with humming or buzzing for the larger ones, drone for the wasps and mosquitoes, and the ladybird with the delicate rustling of its spotted wings.

He knew that there would be a need for frogs, so he thought out all kinds of croakers, besides pools and lakes. 

And then he smiled, his soul was full of smiles, because he thought out birds, and heard how they were chirping, cheeping, singing, warbling and whistling. True, they were also shrieking, cawing, gaggling, crowing, clucking, quacking, hooting and screeching. But among all the beautiful birdsongs this was no problem.

Then he thought out sounds for the animals, mooing, grunting, braying, bleating, squealing, roaring, and mewing. Then he waved his hand and added barking among the sounds. Animals did not always use their voices, and these times they could rest.

God then sighed a great sigh, because he knew what was coming next. He thought out the voice of man. First the throb of the mothers’ hearts so that the foetus growing in the womb would feel safe. Then the cry of newborn babies, but right after that lulling tunes to appease them and lull them to sleep. He thought cooing into the mouths of the mothers and fathers, and chirping babble in those of the babies. He gave lovers sweet voices, if they looked at each other or embraced each other, if they were faraway from each other and could only meet in their thoughts, they were filled with beautiful sounds. 

By the bye God gave over the great empire of sounds to humans, he loved their words, sensible and nonsense, smoothly rolling, and awkwardly barking alike. He rejoiced in their rhymes and songs, he enjoyed as they presented their world with their songs, created beauty and art with the help of the memories they received from heaven.

God then thought there should be instruments, too. Not just objects to be sounded, rattled, struck, but instruments with their own souls. Instruments received souls and they resounded, sang, beat, and flourished rejoicing that they could sound and that they became instruments. Some of them sounded nicely, some beautifully, some just sounded plainly but all of them were happy about their being as instruments.

Sometimes they were making music together, sometimes separately, and often in silence guarding their sounds within themselves. As they knew that their sound is beautiful, they did not have to prove it constantly. Sounds were living within them. 

Then God sighed a great sigh and let electric sound among the people so that they would create new beauties with it. But he sighed because he knew in advance what was going to happen. 

And the time came when people did not want to sing anymore and could enjoy their instruments only if they amplified it terribly with their machines. They could only enjoy devices, then only devices of devices. Finally, the devices took away music from the people, they took away songs, the violins, the flutes the trumpets, the speaking drums of the forests, all instruments, all of them. They took away the sound of birds, of water, of wing, of trees, of insects, all the sounds, forever. Sounds given by God ceased to exist in the world, they were suppressed by noise, by ugly, dirty, sticky rubbish that shouldn’t be allowed to be called sound. For sound is what lives and lets live, and helps live and creates life. Noise can only kill, by contrast because noise doesn’t, indeed, can’t tolerate sounds. There is a knife in the hands of noise, knives are flashing at the tips of its fingers to mow down sounds. The knives can only mow sounds down, they can’t make them live.

Yesterday I was daydreaming in a twilight-sound-symphony here when from towards Athens a white motor yacht sailed in with rasping disco noise screaming from the loudspeakers so that it could be heard kilometres away. Four children and four adults aboard, they were having a great swim, constantly feeding tapes to the tape-recorder. The pieces changed, the quality of them didn’t. They jumped and splashed into water from the top of the boat, then shouted to one another on board. They could only shout trying to out shout the noise.

The sun rushed behind the hill, drawing its golden line to some other place, escaping. The evening birds fell silent, the pines and fig trees were not swishing. The carob-tree dressed in dark-green fury, the shrubs were ashamed. The crickets pulled the dry grass over their heads, even the grass became soundless. Annoyed wasps were flitting about silently. The hills, rocks and stones were rasping, disgusted, from the dirt spilt on them, they couldn’t shake it off, their surfaces, all their ledges, all their lines and curves were sticky even kilometres afar.

The four children did not even suspect that their parents had just missed presenting them with a hearty evening feast full of tasty and fragrant delicacies. The dish could have contained their favourite meals: birdsong, the splashing of waves, the swish of pines, and the chirping of crickets. Yet the parents denied them all these, lied about them, as if they did not exist. 

Their evening meal became a piece of filthy dirt, it smeared over their ears and their heads, it got under their skin, they went to sleep dirty, and they dreamt dirty. They woke up dirty and they had dirty noise for breakfast. The white motor boat was also trembling from dirty noise, the table, too, on which they placed their cups. The morning sounds of the small port, the sea’s splashing on the rocks, the secret talk of the breeze were all hiding. Nobody was interested in the secret, they did not want secrets, there are no secrets in dirty noise, even the dumb can understand its gaping.

 It doesn’t need learning, attention or skills. The secrets of the instruments also remain secrets: the violin should scream to itself, the flute sigh inwardly, the piano sound under its cover. Discovering their secrets would take learning, not to mention learning a score, which would take immense attention, so let it stay nothing more than black scrawl.

One only has to push a couple of buttons on the noise-dirt machine, if the buttons are pushed, no matter how clumsily, it will make a noise to permeate the world.

Noise-dirt is cheap, anybody can get it, smear it on themselves or others, and wallow in it. As they always walk and move in noise-dirt, they get immersed in it above the ears, and don’t see – or rather hear – anything outside of it. They are not disgusted, since this is their everyday word, they eat this with their daily food, drink it with their drinks. This shakes them into joy and wobbles them to sleep. This frees them from their thoughts. From their loneliness, too, since dirt is common in noise-dirt, there is no privacy there, the music box in the yard not bigger than a fist, and the TV, the size of a lamb’s head, smear all neighbours uniformly near and far. They hear the same thing, don’t they?

The most terrible thing, however, is the permanence of noise dirt. It is impossible to wash down, there’s nowhere to hide from it. It is flowing, rolling, leaking constantly and thickly like some stench. If the toilet broken in the bathroom, it may give off its foul smell and contents. But it may have been stinking for such a long time that you have got used to it, you enter the bathroom and wash up besides it. Its reek has filled you and you have become part of it, you can’t smell it, you slip around in it, and you bathe your children around it.

If they become infected because of it you don’t even notice, you became infected a long time ago, so you can’t perceive it. You live in spiritual deafness, you have not heard anything from among the Creator’s sound-gifts, you don’t know about them and you don’t look for them. The winds, the trees, the bugs, the birds all drop silent around you. The memory of your mother’s heartbeat, too, since you don’t know beautiful sounds anymore. Even your mother couldn’t have known lullabies; she was probably given noise-dirt to lull her. She could only hear prose, instructions, complaints, gossip, everyday things from her own mother. And among and behind those sounds she received noise-dirt everywhere. The evening tale, the walls around, the teddy bear, the little box of building blocks were all besmeared with noise-dirt, and the dreams became dirty, too.

Few people think about deafening as one of the ways of destroying children. True, burning them to smoke was easier. But noise-mangling makes fast and sure damage, and is strong as the strongest poison.

Not long time ago they used to pour hot lead into the ears as punishment. Obtaining and melting lead would be too complicated now, and besides, children wouldn’t hold their ears steadily. They hold them to the noise-machines willingly. They are given the noise-machines as birthday or Christmas presents, or for no particular reason, and they are condemned to deafness. So that the machines would make noise in the bed, in the car, in the street, in the garden, in a kayak, on a sailboat, during skiing, hiking tours, and picnics on the meadow, in waiting rooms, anywhere and everywhere. The effect is sure in this way, there’s no hope of escape. 

I was thinking about the motives of adults, since most of them are not angry with their children. Would it be ample reason if out of envy they tried to deprive them of something which they could never participate in?

Nearly ten years ago I was giving a talk about the effects of beautiful sounds at a UNESCO conference which was held in Cork, the ancient Irish city, in a quiet room opening to a park full of leafy trees. My fellow-presenters reported frightening results of surveys about physical damages cause by noises. The examination of those with hearing difficulties showed not only the damage of not only the most delicate particles of the hearing organ, but also the auditory ossicles. They hinted at the possibility of the problem’s inheritance from generation to generation.

Losing an organ of sense is a great problem, as they who suffer from it know too well. But those who manage to wriggle out of the din, cry only for their ears, their souls are not lost. Noise poisoning destroys out of stupidity, indifference and selfishness, and you can find these in its influence. Besides damaging the organ of sense, it soils the much more sensitive soul, the basic traits of character in the child. Extending through generations, naturally. Parents who poison with noise can’t have children with a sensitive ear for music, or children who would pay attention to others’ sensitivity. Only a narrow-minded insensitiveness can wade through the hearing space of others so that there would be no way to escape it. 

I don’t know how emotive effects are transferred, but I would not like to be in those parents’ shoes who take such risks. The personality of children is woven from thousands of fine threads which are a thousand times finer than our nerve fibres. Those who tie knots on these threads will hardly be able to untie them afterwards. If you pull them, they will tear. It is difficult to conjure delicate things by tearing. From the knotty threads an awkward, disagreeable texture is woven, their personality will become such, too. 

The enjoyment of sounds received from nature can’t be classified among bodily pleasures. It is an emotion affecting the body as well as the soul, and inspiring creative beauties. Its lack, like the lack of vitamin C, causes scurvy, carelessness-scurvy, scorn of other people and sacred places, rotting indifference towards other people’s needs, pleasures, hobbies, learning, and talent. The poisoned ones are insensitive not only to the beauty, but also to the message of sounds. For pure beauty always sends its messages through emotions and incites the desire of receiving and giving.

Whenever I receive the gift of true nature-sounds I am overcome by the desire to communicate my experience, which is always peculiar, since the brook in the Pilis mountains will not purl in the same way twice, not even at the same place. The pine-cone thrown into it will splash differently, as it will purl differently in the chilly wind and the warm sunshine. It answers the owl’s evening screech as well as my frightened rush, the morning birdsong, or my leisurely paces. Its sound answers my silence, my attention, and my aptness to receive it. The fine, detailed, richly varied sounds search for a connection with my spiritual being. It depends on my readiness whether they will find it.

What did Jesus hear for forty days in the desert? I have never spent a night in the desert but people say there is such silence there you can hear the music of the stars. Someone preparing for a great sacrifice could gather strength from sounds to undergo when mobs were pressing him and urging him to do wonders, when people were spying at him from the tops of trees, setting sly traps around him, inquiring him dishonestly, betraying him, despising him, humiliating him, flogging and crucifying him.

Nowadays noise-devices may be used to set the background for the abusive words of the mockers, and they can foul the minutes of devotion with rasping boom boxes amplified to howl stridently. Children can march freely with ghetto blasters ensuring that they will never enter the kingdom of heavens.

The sounds of nature and those sounds which in my opinion are musical are similar in their effect: they lead towards catharsis. 

A long time ago, during the years when I was writing my PhD I was giving a lecture in the smaller lecture theatre of the Hungarian Academy of Science. We were analysing a problem in speech development and reported the results of our experiment with children in state care with the help of graphic figures and charts projected on a wide screen. At that time recognition in the scientific community was important for me. Still, of all the remarks and questions put to me in the crowded room, I remember a young girl’s comment. She told us that she was also teaching children left by their parents in a state home. In one of the afternoons they were watching the sun set in bright red and gold from the window for a long time. As the light disappeared one of her pupils ran to her, hugged her tight and whispered: I will be good.

I would like to find this girl to recall this memory with her and to assure her that her comment has been more enduring than my lecture. And it would be good, very good to find the child among all those neglected and lost ones in state care whose bodily and spiritual deterioration and unviability is constantly talked and written about, reported on and debated. Who knows what results a single cathartic experience may produce?

Spectacles, tastes, fragrances, sounds, works of art are perceived by our organs of sense, but the desire for catharsis received from them derives from different sources. Drop by drop it reaches our thirsty lips. When I am singing I can feel it on my lips. If I recall the first sound-experience of my childhood, I find my mother’s singing. She sang clearly, sonorously, for us, and for herself, too, because most of the time she was singing during work.

We only rarely turned on the radio for programmes we chose with great attention. We did not then nor ever have a TV. I did not know the background music played by machines to which nobody pays attention. My mother’s singing planted in my memory the experience of song which has accompanied me up to this day. I sing in my rapture, in enchantment. I sing close to tears, in my devotion, too. The three-spire church in Szany was filled by the song of my father’s pupils: children, girls, women in the nave, men up in the choir, beside the organ. Even the stones of the church were resounding with music.

I always look for such things. Sometimes I manage to get to Pilisszentkereszt where women wearing kerchiefs and many-layered skirts sing at the top of their voices in Hungarian and Slovakian. I sing together with them the songs I know till I am moved to tears. I arrive carrying a backpack, wearing boots and a knitted hat on my short hair, still, we are so alike. 

Under my roof, in the flat, my song is chasing away cares, and is entertaining me. Out in the open, it is part of my lonely experiences. Near an Iceland waterfall I was singing to the ice, the snow, the clouds, the vapour, and the bubbling, crystal-clear water, to the never-seen wonder in which all forms of water met. In a meadow on Dobogókő I lean my back against an oak tree and sing until I feel the sounds hiding in the tree’s trunk. They’re buzzing inside.

I find my way home through singing in the Aegean. In the hours after sunrise I introduce the sea to the singing memories from the three-spire church in Szany. I can stay in the September sea as long as I’d like to, I sing all my friends and then find out new ones. 

The Aegean is a matchless partner, its splashes keep me in a throb, and if its waves are curling under the swish of the high-flying autumn winds, it composes a fugue with me. We improvise long compositions from a single hallelujah or amen, we turn, splash and do somersaults. We only stop when the sound of a motor roars up. 

However far it is, it surely comes this way. They say – and I have seen – the Finns never go near a lonely person, they leave him or her alone to contemplate. By contrast, the Greeks are willing to stray kilometres from their original direction to see the huge bay’s only bather. They don’t spare their fuel, I am already swimming close to the beach when the curious boat owner manages to steer his vessel close to my shoulder. He stares at me, always smoking, as if he wanted to count the freckles on my arms, because the water is translucent. Only after this does he throw his line back again trying to catch something edible, and puffs on in his black smoke-cloud.

In long periods of heat, swimming far away from the shore, lake Balaton is also partner to make friends through song. In the years when I was sailing, I used to sing in the evening hours close to the reeds. I never lit a lantern, tiny bats were scurrying around me, noiselessly in the dark. Fishermen in boats shouted to each other for some time about tench and bass news, or the price of corn with ever thickening pauses between their communications. Finally, after a long general pause only fish were splashing sometimes. In their own language. If lightings didn’t flash far away, I could peacefully cuddle up among the sputtering sounds of my sleeping-bag. 

In complete silence I only sing to myself. Like this year in the Sierra.

Tamás always makes his mother believe that the passing of years is insignificant, and hiking tours will always be ours. He puts the easy things in my backpack. He packs up his own pack high, carrying and balancing the tent, the sleeping bags, and the camping stove. He measures the way with maps and compasses, I walk behind him, stepping with my boots moderato expressivo from rock to rock. I would walk up to any height in this way, feeling safe, as once I did in my mother’s arms. 

At last we stray from the path, make a shortcut through the pine-forest and the mountain lake, the lonely one, reveals itself. At almost two thousand meters above sea-level, a greenish blue drop of tear. Thick pine trees bend their shadows over it, the water, just like the shadow, is motionless. Silence is like a breath. Under myriads of stars, we are looking for soft grass among the smooth rocks for our sleeping-bags.

Stars are encouraging, we don’t even need the tent. We hang all our food in a bag on high branches as a precaution against bears. The branch reaches out far from the trunk, it is strong enough for the bag, but it wouldn’t keep up a bear. We sling a stone tied to the rope across it, thus we can pull up the bag high. We search our pockets, too: bears may visit us for a little piece of sweet, or even for toothpaste, not out of naughtiness, just for gastronomic delights.

The night doesn’t bring any noise, only a symphony of sounds out of different silences. A sighing swish? I must be imagining it. But a shadow sets down on the dry pine, a black, soft shade. It rests, I am watching it. An owl! It is sitting, it owns silence. I hold back my breath so that we may be a little bit similar in our silence. I watch it for a long time, it stays with me as I stay with it. It takes on wings softly, it flits away without noise, without any sound. Would my blind children hear it?

Long blades of grass are leaning on the lake, silent in silent water. I step into the crystal water from a rotting trunk, I sink into it, I float on the surface, but I am not splashing: I sing with my movements. 

Morning is greeted by the birds, a chirping here, a whistle there. “It is singing beautifully, walking on the rays of the sun with its wings” – Bartók sounds within me, under my wet hair, in my cells.

As the sun sets, it dissolves into colours, golden emotions. “I will be good” said the little child in state-care who must have been abandoned, and may not have been loved.

Accept sorrows, clouds. They are sent from above. Hold your hands up high, be grateful for the silence, the blessed, balmy sounds. 

Have mercy on children.