The Sound of Flights

My most memorable experience with sound actually pertains to a shock I experienced when faced with an absence of a particular sound I was used to constantly hearing. Growing up in Flower Mound, Texas, I perpetually heard the sounds of planes entering and leaving DFW airport, which is located just south of the great town of Flower Mound. Night and day, great rushes of mobile machines moving through the sky rained down upon our ears. The sound was a daily affirmation of the never ceasing transportation taking place in the world above, a sound that I became used to and eventually stopped noticing.

How odd, though, to suddenly have that sound taken away. After the World Trade Center Attacks, the town became eerily quiet due to the lack of air transportation in the days that followed. It was strange how the consistency of the plane roars took on a role of comfort when I was faced to go about my day without them flooding my soundscape. Without the one-after-the-other rumbles coming from the sky, the calmness and silence was unnerving. Something was missing.

Soon enough, the planes began to take back off the runways, and to again pass above us while flying in from cities elsewhere. But the days when they were sedentary remained memorable for me. I think this took hold in my memory because I experienced how powerful of an impact the auditory world one exists in daily can have.