The Sound of Science

It's physical... elemental even.

With the water splashing about me, shielded by my yet to be named car, I am hummed into a trance. Whether it be simply from the noise, and subtle low buzz from the spay hitting my black beauty... or from the tune flooding from her speakers, which dwarfs the water's buzz with it's own, deeper, stronger core-shaking earthquake-like rumble that comes in sequence. Cecil Otter seemed to calculate the baseline with this moment in mind, just for me. As the robotic arms encircle us, spinning too, in sequence, like a choreographed dance with Cecil's masterpiece, I enjoy every deep low of the base as it hits, with an extended shake, like that of a strong, yet smooth blast of thunder. It fills my body with a buzz, which feels strongest in my chest, and radiates outward like heat from a fire.

It's moving.

Even if I were to focus merely on the feeling that the sound waves bore into me, and ignore the poetry recited, it is still like a drug. It reminds me of the sensation of holding two magnets near, like-polarized ends together, and feeling the push-back of an all but invisible, and seemingly imaginary force. You wouldn't believe it if you hadn't felt it for yourself.

The arms of the car wash continue their repetitive journey around my nameless car, and I continue to slip deeper into my trance. I stare, helpless and smiling, at the rearview mirror to my left which has become a happy victim of the artificial thunder around us. With each roar, the largest beads of water, as if connected to one another, move in gravity's direction only during the buzz of sound's wave.

It's beautiful.

In a car-wash in downtown Milwaukee, music roaring, and miles away from the nearest tree, I feel connected to nature. Not trees, or animals, but elements; science.

I found myself, just as the beads of water did, at the mercy of the thunderous rumble of the bass. And, when I really thought about it a bit more, I realized that I really had no hope at a different fate than those drops of water, for I am indeed, made mostly of water. I'm elemental. Why would it then, in my body, be any less prone to being shaken in such a way than if it were not, strictly speaking, a part of me.

I guess the only real difference is that I could appreciate the words being sung to me, whereas the water that did not belong to my body, could not. Though, sometimes, I wonder about that too.