The History of Sound: Stories

by Ben Shattuck

My grandfather once said that happiness isn’t a story. So, there isn’t much to say about those first weeks.

Now, in my eighties, I know that most things we love are seeded before we’re ten.

The history of sound, lost daily. I’ve started to think of Earth as a wax cylinder; the sun the needle, laid on the land and drawing out the day’s music—the sound of people arguing, cooking, laughing, singing, moaning, crying, flirting. And behind that, a silent sweep of millions of sleeping people, washing across the Earth like static.

Years out of college, he read that the part of the brain activated for love and the part activated for grief were quite close, physically. Love can be a type of euphoric grief, the author wrote. There are stages: self-delusion, understanding, and—most important—the obsession, in a different way than grief, with another person.

But you should have a little pain in your life—humans are meant to have a little pain. Endings, I suppose, like seasons, like winters. That’s where all the good stuff is. Ripped apart, so you can feel the mending. There’s nothing like it. I wouldn’t wish an uneventful life on my worst enemy.”

and so the artifact remained just that: something from a long time ago that she would never really understand.