Categories: Editor's Desk

Samir Shukla

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By Samir Shukla

I looked around the room in a half-slumber daze, squinted my eyes and made out the time. It was 3:34am. The music from the concert a few hours earlier still playing in my mind. I got up and made the requisite trip to the bathroom. Shuffling in the night, breathing slow, I rolled back into the sheets, a distant streetlight streaming into the room, the band still playing in my head.

I dreamt of timelines along with the music, a slideshow of the journeys of my life squeezed into a long dream.

The guitars were riffing probably just around 105 decibels. The waves of sound lifting the crowd to a higher plane. The music filled the venue – no tribes, political partisans, or genders mattered in those moments. The sound equalized all into rhythmic head swaying and dance. Oneness. Music, of course, comes in myriad styles, fusions, and genres.

This night, though, it was all guitars, bass, drums. Primal rock ‘n’ roll. When the feedback and riffs, controlled just right, converge with the senses, an otherworldly mood opens. The songs eventually end and fade, but the aura lingers in the air, embeds itself, and becomes memory.

Think of a beloved song that over the years, after the initial few listens, has become a part of your life’s soundtrack, rolled into your life’s experiences and memories.

Maybe you first heard that song on the radio, or a friend singing it, in a concert, on TV, or maybe even in a dream. Songs and music are the stuff that become parts of people’s lives, awakening intense memories and moods, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, at the most unexpected moments. How many times have you driven down the road, stuck in traffic, and a song pops up on the radio and your mood instantly changes. It is simply the stuff of life. Imagine most movies without the music, they seem incomplete.

Of course, music doesn’t have to come at you at 105 or more decibels. There is a range, and it can be a whispered lyric or just the right amount of power, all the way to, well, painfully loud. One of the first pieces of music you hear as you enter this world are the voices in the proximity of your birth into the world. The human voices. The chatter segues into the whisper of the mother, so right and soothing at around 30 decibels. The sound of typical human conversations clock in at around 60 decibels.

The first bits of sound are felt, maybe even heard, in the comforts of the womb. The muffled sounds of the mother’s heart surely imbued the cadence of rhythm in many during the time spent in the womb. Maybe those kicks felt by the mother are due to her child dancing in that enclosure while hearing music in the head.

The sounds of the universe come to us at varying decibels, varying loudness. They range from the barely audible whispers of lovers to the songs of birds, the pleasant spectrum, all the way to the roar of jet engines, fireworks, gun shots, the uncomfortable spectrum of sound.

Now the night is fading and the music playing in my mind has finished and I wake to a loud truck driving past on the street. The sound dream from the concert faded as sunlight smacked me to the reality of a new day.

On this day this year, in mid-July, if assigning a decibel for each year of my life was some sort of measurement parameter, then I have arrived at 60 decibels. The level of sound at which a normal human conversation is measured, comfortable and filling that most basic human need, hearing another voice in proximity.

This morning I am conversing with myself, at this comfortable volume, and there are no loud voices buzzing in my ears about regrets or missed opportunities, or of any stumbles, setbacks, or misgivings. The voice is mine and saying it’s all good. It’s the end of another decade, but also just another day. Carry on.

I chat with myself for a few more seconds, standing in front of the mirror, listening to my voice, and now I take a long and deep breath, massage my stiff left shoulder, and get ready to step out into the world.

There are times a whisper is what’s needed, then another time nothing less than the power of a rock concert fits the bill. This morning, 60 decibels sound just right.


Samir Shukla is the Editor of Saathee Magazine
Contact: [email protected]
Twitter: @ShuklaWrites
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