My Sound Experience by Josh Hernandez

            Its tough to nail down the experience with sound that has most impacted me as I can immediately think of several instances where sound has had a profound effect on me—several times where I was overwhelmed and dumbfounded at what I was experiencing. There was the first time I entered the DJ booth and was engulfed in the sound and the voices of my friends and myself. There was the first time I remember hearing a truly remarkable story sitting around a campfire at one of a hundred campouts, or even just being able to listing to the outdoors all those nights after the campfires.

            However, I can recall one moment above the rest that will never leave my mind as long as I live. It pertains to a box of music I found a few years ago. I was searching through an old truck that was long past use when I came across a box of CDs. As I rummaged through them, some of them scratched, some of them dusty, all of them used and loved, I found pieces of a personality, pieces of a person past. The first CD was just a piece of 90’s history, Doubt by Jesus Jones—I never liked it very much. Another was the soundtrack to a movie I’d seen way too much of as a kid—Kill Bill. Tarintino movies always seem to have the best soundtracks. In a moment I was no longer playing CDs on a truck stereo, but instead, I was on a couch having a pickle eating contest with my father watching some movie that would keep me terrified until the next Saturday where we would repeat the process with a different cheesy terror. This week we chose to go with an action movie instead and watched Tarintino’s Kill Bill. So Uma Thurman kicked some ass, we ate some pickles, the movie ended, and I was back in the truck, flipping through the tracks to a CD that was so old, the yellow had faded to a tan. I found a couple of mariachi and Spanish pop CDs that my dad listened to even though he couldn’t understand a word of them. It was what he grew up with, even if he didn’t grow up with the language. On the way to work he would put on a mariachi CD and I’d ask, “what’re they saying?” My dad would respond with a, “how am I supposed to know?” And we’d both laugh and keep on driving and talking and joking about whatever was going on at the time. Each one of those CDs, and each one of those tracks, was more than just music, more than just notes strung together. Each song was a part of his personality to laugh about, and each song was a memory I had with my father. As I looked through that old box of CDs, each song affected me more and more. Every track brought back another wonderful memory. I was taken by every memory and overwhelmed with emotion.

            That one experience, that one hour or so of listening to different songs off different CDs, had a bigger impact on me than any other time listening to anything, that I can remember. My father had passed away a month or so earlier and I was just beginning to go through his things. One of the first items I found was that box of CDs in his truck. Most of them weren’t very good CDs thinking about it now, but as I was listening to them at that moment, I was taken to a different place. I could remember each site, sound, smell, and the feeling that accompanied each memory as vividly as if I was still there.  That single experience with sound was the most powerful I’ve had and one that will stick with me the rest of my life.

--Josh Hernandez