Acoustic Massage Therapy

When I was a kid we used to enjoy going up to UCLA's Open House weekend offered once every year. We lived within a stone's throw of the physics buildings and the engineering school. We'd walk up and tour the monkey labs in one building and the old aircraft engines on display in another. Two of our favorites, however, were the acoustic chamber and the soundproof room. The former was almost scary as the tour guide fired a pistol and the shot rang out and echoed and reverberated for what seemed like 5 minutes off the roof and floor and walls and impossibly tall ceiling. The latter was eerie for other reasons as you walked into the center of the room, suspended on a floor made of mesh, surrounded on all sides by fiber cones. When the door closed all sound seemed to disappear. When the gun was fired, there was the most insignificant "pop," the sound literally absorbed-- sucked from the room almost before it could meet one's eardrums.

It's remarkable to me how, in real life, we are always surrounded by sound. Whether it's people or machinery, immediate vicinity or way far off, it's extremely unusual when you don't hear anything. Fact is, it's when you seemingly don't hear anything that it usually freaks a person out, as in creaks in the floor, cracks in the wall, a sudden click, thump, or knock: "What was that?!"

I'm thinking about all this because last night I went to bed with the sound of thunder and raindrops on the roof. Rain on the roof, running off and rushing through the downspouts. As I lay there simultaneously trying to fall asleep and trying to stay awake to listen I started to think about all this. Rain on the roof, water running in a stream, and the crash of an ocean's waves-- the latter a sound that, like thunder, you feel percuss in your chest as much as hear. These seem, at least for me, to be among the most comforting sounds I can encounter. While I don't know why, or even if it's been studied, I like to think it's in part because of our biological connection to water. That and, unlike the constant assault of the cacophony that surrounds us, I just don't have the pleasure all that often of lying there, in the still of the night, listening to the rain. It's an acoustic massage. Massage therapy for the soul.