Acoustic Isolation

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Acoustic Isolation
Music gets recorded
in windowless rooms
because glass is where
the problems begin.
It is better to imagine
you are a singing bird
than it is to see the bird
as you stand before
a microphone trying
to remember to breathe.
Acoustic isolation means
no sirens or chainsaws
pierce hollow core doors
to invade silent rooms
as dimmed versions
of themselves sent
out in waves once
screaming at the source.
We aim to keep outside
sounds out, inside
sounds in. To one,
the other is noise. 
Still the sawyer leans
into it, wailing the flat
musical note A at 200
cycles per second as
snakes register sound
vibrations through dirt.
Low waves from forgotten
foot falls, idling engines,
the high whine of a chain
spinning, soon absorbed
by soil, rock, leaf litter.
Somewhere nearby
a pebble splashes
into a pond. If
you were underwater,
you might notice
an absence of sparkle,
the high frequencies
of rock striking water
lost to the world above.
Underwater, only
the midrange plunk
scattered over fish gills,
picked up by the inner
ears of turtles, absorbed
by sand, sediment.
Sounds die when you
greet them with mass.

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Acoustic isolation does
not enliven the tone
of a room or how it feels
to strike a note lifted
on the wings of reverb,
unconcerned with hollow
doors, air gaps, glass, all
the holes in a building.
Still with the studio door
closed you don't want
to hear anything except
yourself and whatever
sounds you are making
to the rhythm of your
heartbeat sometimes
poetically if wrongly
compared to a bass drum
(if so, it is a bass drum
equalized by blood,
bones, and skin
into the tone of
kicked cardboard).
It is not the pursuit
of ideals that slows me
but the sight of rain
I cannot hear because
the room is too tight
to allow for it.
Instead, the soft thrum
of a cardboard kick drum
propels me to imagine
not the bloom of reverb
but the repeat of an echo
that becomes ever softer
over time. Time, time
whose supposed voice
leads us forever closer
to a cliff in darkness
where the wind catches
our ears and the annoyance
of cooling fans in silent
rooms or jet noise too close
overhead or the high zing
of an electric box where
all the buried lines
converge to hum and fizz
around the clock fades.
Is it then that we realize
our dream of acoustic
isolation, finally shake
everything we called
noise in our pursuit
of safety, separation? 

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