Member-only story
Those Blaring Blowers
During this period of corona-lockdown, the soundscape out here in the soon-to-be-leafy suburbs west of Boston has changed dramatically in the past month or so. We lost two high-level contributors of machine noise when the pandemic hit: commuters and airplanes.
I’ve been here more than four decades, and we’ve always had cars, but the scrum, the manic sprint in and out of the city has gone off the charts in the last 15 years or so. For sustained periods twice a day, thousands of cars race through our lane, seeking to avoid the jams on the main roads (and helped along by Google’s advice on how to do so).
Our town also happens to host the first beacon for westbound flights out of Logan Airport. So, we normally get continuous cones of aircraft sound across the sky so densely that one comes into range before the other fully fades. There is never silence. The closest we come is during large storms when natural sound eclipses human noise.
I’m very sensitive to sound. I always have been. From hearing symphonies in my head as I went off to sleep as a child to listening deeply to a cellist or violinist play a solo as an adolescent, I was immersed in a world of fine audio distinctions. This acuity comes with a downside. Discordant noises can be physically painful…
