Ping—Bong—Whoosh—Boom!
Sound. It’s something that most of us encounter daily.
Soothing, inspiring, motivating, disruptive, nerve-wracking, scary. Sounds can make us feel all these things, but what is it—really?
At its core, sound is a vibration or series of vibrations that cause a disturbance of the air. This disturbance causes the air to travel in waves that, once they meet the human ear, translate into sound.
Many of us are familiar with the philosophical question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This question is often posed to start a debate.
However, the debate becomes a bit one-sided when you consider that the tree hitting the ground would cause a massive vibration that would create a disturbance in the air resulting in waves of air traveling a great distance.
It is irrelevant as to whether there is an ear present to collect the waves and translate them into sound. The sound has been made; it just has not been heard.
This distinction becomes even more meaningful when we consider that millions of people navigate a world where sound exists all around them in ways beyond traditional hearing.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 5% of the world’s population—which is about 430 million people—experience disabling hearing loss.
Deaf people can experience sound through the vibrations that the sound carries. Deaf individuals often pick up on sound-related cues through tactile sensations. A deaf mother, for example, could sense her child stomping around the kitchen simply by feeling the vibrations through the floor.
As a child I was afraid of thunderstorms. The lightning, a harbinger of the fierceness and intensity of the thunder to come. Then the fierce boom. It wasn’t so much the sound that terrified me as it was the tremor of the walls, and the shaking of the windows around me; an unsettling realization that the very barriers meant to protect me from the storm seemed helpless against its fury. Was I truly safe? Or was the illusion of shelter just another kind of fragility?
In our writing, sound can be used to convey fear (the sound of an intruder outside a window), expound on loneliness (the sound of a ticking clock), or sadness over a loss (the sound of a familiar song).
Just as sound waves travel and leave an impression even when unheard, so too can the right words create an emotional or intellectual ripple in a reader.
Much like our narratives, sound exists—not because it is heard, but because it moves. Just as words resonate—not because they are read, but because they stir something deeper. Something human.