Communication: Sound into Form

Abstract

I have returned to the Sierra hot springs pool that opened this book, nestled in the skirts of an alpine meadow. It is very early this spring morning, the sky still dark, though fading to light behind me. A forest of cedar and Douglas fir slopes up to the jagged ridgeline; before me lays a grassy marsh. To the east the horizon begins to show the promise of a new day, dimming the stars of Cassiopeia—hung upside down there by the Gods for her hubris. The Big Dipper lays upright across the north sky; stable and open, ready to receive. Bats tangle above the pool, polishing off the last of the night’s mosquitoes before turning in. My soundscape is intimate; the drip of water, the sound of breath.

Communication…is now recognized as the mechanism by which all the essential interactions between organisms are accomplished; a system of transmitters and receivers which integrates organisms and coordinates their activities into functioning social groups or communities much as the nervous system coordinates the activities of the tissues in a smoothly functioning organism. (John T. Emlen, Jr. in his introduction to “Animal Sounds and Communication”)¹