I heard last week that a friend who’d lost her husband recently still hears his Parkinson’s-induced shuffling footsteps around the house, nearly two months after his demise.
This reminds me of my own experiences of the brain retaining sounds after the event.
I was visiting an American friend who was living in Hartford, Connecticut, at the time. During my fortnight-long stay there, I’d hear police car sirens frequently throughout the day and night.
After my return, I’d continue to hear those sirens for a while. I lived in a cul-de-sac in a residential part of Highbury (a suburb in Zone 2 of London), therefore not exposed to traffic sounds, not even police car sirens. Also, this was 1983, with British police car sirens having a different pitch from American ones.
I went to Prague at Easter 1992, staying three nights at a Brit’s flat in Dejvická, a residential area of Prague that has a tramline a few hundred yards from the flat. I could hear the keklunk-keklunk of the tram at night.
Back in Highbury, where there isn’t a tram line, that same keklunk-keklunk that I’d heard over only three nights would play in my head night after night for a while after my return.
(USA, 1983 / Czech Republic, 1992 / UK, 2025)
No comments:
Post a Comment