Sounds of the Night

Sunday night my friend Joe came over, interrupting my very important viewing of the Tony awards. I love watching the award show, regardless if I've seen the most recent and most popular musical or not (which, as it turns out, this year I had.) I like watching the performances, all of the actors going on stage in front of millions of people. Sure, it's no different than the thousands of other nights they perform a year, but still there's something different about this one. There, in front of their peers, their fellow actors, they get to show that, yes, they made it. It brings me back to my theatre days and the feeling I had not during performances, but during competitions. Nervous, standing in front of the judges, I'd unleash my monologue or scene hoping to impress them all while knowing, "yes, I did it. I got this far." It was Joe who was in the duet mime with me, Joe who helped choreograph and score it, which led to our triumphant victory. That year Joe also competed with a play he wrote, showing it to the judges and having fellow actors delicately speak the lines.

Like me, Joe went through a multitude of changes since high school and not just when it came to moving on from theatre. While neither of us act anymore, we both dabble in writing every now and then. As a Masters student in a Communications program, he went through an array of feats, including advertising by dressing up like a robot. Seriously. He'd walk through the union with a swarm of friends, gaining a following and, of course, publicity for his radio station. He was just given a new task, a new way to creatively unleash his talent, combining his penchant for writing and his adoration towards radio, being a radio DJ. He's writing radio plays.

After reluctantly turning off my award show, but not forgetting to hit "record" on the tivo, we hung out for a while. Since Joe is still up in Tallahassee with his wonderful wife Holly, I don't see him nearly as much as I'd like to. We talked about the past, the present, and, well, not really our respective futures. Along the way, he told me about his play. While in Orlando he was trying to record some noises, some background sounds to add when he put his project together. Since I never recorded sounds in the wilderness before, we decided to try it out that night. And so he grabbed his recording equipment and I grabbed a flashlight and we set off to create a soundtrack.

Seeing as I live in front of a lake, my backyard was filled with noise and, naturally, bugs. I moved the flashlight around tentatively, afraid of snakes slithering across my feet as we walked through the tall uncut grass. Up and down the hill we trekked until we got to the edge of the lake. And then we listened.

I'm a very visual person. I'll remember the scene in the movie, but not the song playing in the background. I'll remember the view of the city from the top of the Duomo, but not the sound of the bells ringing nearby. Quietly, he held his microphone up as I continued to wave around my flashlight, hoping to scare any snake that dared cross our path.

It was interesting, listening for once. The lake was dark like oil and slowly moving. The moon lit the treetops and woods surrounding it. And in the woods we heard frogs. Loads of them surrounding us. Like an army waiting to attack they croaked to one another, talking about coordinates and the shortest route to take. We heard the bugs buzzing around through the air and landing sometimes on our shoulders. We heard the planes flying low overhead, bringing people home or at least to their current destination. We heard the birds squawking in a tree a few feet down. And though they all seemed like they were out to get us, much like the imaginary snakes wrapping around my feet, their sounds came together creating a delicate tapestry. First the croak, then the squawk, another croak, the wind hitting the leaves, and the airplane. All one song, one soundtrack.

It's interesting what you can find when you don't use your eyes, when you actually step back and listen. Joe has become used to it, noting the differences and appreciating each beat. I, a novice, was amazed. I wanted to save it all, keep it forever for comfort. We were two explorers, Joe with his microphone and me with my flashlight, looking for inspiration.

I went back outside last night, sitting on my back porch, and I listened. It wasn't as memorable as the time with Joe, but it was still mine. You can always capture the night, take a picture and a recording, but can it ever be the same? Maybe the frogs weren't surrounding us to attack, maybe they were just singing.