I recently read a book that was written in 1867 titled A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, by John Muir (thanks Augie). The author was about 29 years old at the time and just a budding writer, but in this journal of his walk to the Gulf of Mexico he expressed some interesting ideas and observations.
John Muir (1838-1914), among other notable achievements, Muir was the founder of the Sierra Club. Some people called him an environmentalist, naturalist, conservationist, botanist, geologist, ornithologist, author, explorer, visionary, wilderness prophet, citizen of the universe... and he was, but those labels don't quite suffice.
For me, one of the thought provoking ideas in this writing is about the sounds of nature; the running water, wind, waves, birds, etc. he referred to these sounds as music. Meanwhile the sound of bells was "brain-splitting", Africans working in a cotton field "make a great deal of noise" and a brass band in uniform made "the most piercing artificial music".
It's humorous because there are now many songs about, inspired by or a tribute to John Muir. He probably would not appreciate any of them.
A couple years ago I read about a composer who was digitally recording barely audible natural sounds, like ants working, and manipulating these recordings on a computer into audio soundscapes. Maybe that's a concept Muir might approve of?
Posted by dancoy at December 29, 2006 05:15 PM