Sunday, 11 May 2003 | Local sounds

The streets are always noisy, crammed with talkers, sirens, car alarms, engines, screeching tires, music, honking horns, squealing subway brakes, and construction work (which has the potential to be the loudest of them all). A lot of the time I don't notice it, unless I'm suddenly yelling at the person I'm walking with, or if I'm on the phone with someone who points out the wailing throbbing hissing roar in the background.

The inside of my apartment is actually rather quiet (usually), unless I'm producing the noise myself. However, I generally don't notice the absence of noise, either, until it's not quiet, such as when that big-bellied kid runs back and forth down the long hallway that stretches the length of my apartment, or when the downstairs neighbors (albeit, rarely) vibrate my floor with music that I can't identify or like, when car alarms sing in loops and slides and high-pitched notes, or when I open the door to the street and am flooded with caffeinated sounds of car bass, screaming children, and yelling conversations.

On Saturday, however, I could easily hear two pentecostal preachers speak as if the microphones they were holding were really lodged in their throats. They set up a few giant speakers on the sidewalk (facing outward), paced up and down the pavement, passed out Spanish-English tracts, and sang and preached in Spanish. They had the volume turned up so loud that the sounds they produced never had a chance to sound good; the speakers were vibrating like bees. Today, it was music that was cranked up in buzzing pain. In addition to that, the ice cream truck played "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands" on rotation, and every 13 seconds I could hear a live rooster announce his presence to all of the female chickens in Brooklyn, which almost sounded as if it were part of the show.

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Yesterday (after finally roller skating in Central Park), I discovered what digital cameras are really good for.