It is possible everyone has a similar experience with regard to one sound or other; even so I crave indulgence on this strange one.
Across the planet wherever humans are gathered in sufficient number, regardless of race, colour, creed or language, there is a sound symptomatic of that creature's inexorable but un-planned progress: it is simply a little dreary and mundane yet induces much melancholy and even unhappiness.
In times past this sort of sound may have been the dull thud of axe-on-tree, or shimmery hammer blows on a smithy's ringing anvil or even of hammer and saw on 2x4s at construction sites – the cheerful, rhythmic resonance that, along with the unashamed whistler, has come to indicate meaningful industry and more particularly men at work, rare enough now unless one is within earshot of a some sort of building site. It may be possible to hear regular and repetitive mechanisation and the associated shouts and communicative directions if one lives near small-scale production plants or even factories, but more often this is now relegated to hideous and windswept out-of-town complexes and convenient industrial units with their purpose-built access roads. The sounds made here are not really the definition of urbanity.
The sound to which I refer is also probably heard at all hours of the day and night on a daily basis by the most costly urbanite and lowliest slum-dweller. It is not the errant car alarm, that snatcher of a night's peace, nor is it the wailing siren of the emergency services that allows all and sundry to know that Doris has made the tea back at the station and that if they don't get back pronto her cream cakes will have been had by admin. No, the sound that drives me mad is that of the humble, accelerated moped.
To be precise, it is not merely mopeds but also all forms of motorcycle, and even tuk-tuks. More precisely it is their mournful running through small streets that gives that characteristic whir, or the rising angry purr that indicates rapid and unfettered movement through narrow confines. I hear it here in Olomouc, in Hong Kong, in Bangkok, London and a host of towns and villages – it is everywhere because they are everywhere. Untold millions of people have made the decision to buy a cheap form of individualised transport and, the economics of needs and costs of each situation having been weighed, the attraction of two-wheelers, and mopeds in particular, usually come out pretty well: A-to-B without too much fuss, without the problems of car parking and without spending a fortune on purchasing, fuel and running.
The moped sound occurs in exactly the same way – a street/road/lane/alley is empty, or at least passable on two wheels, and the rider takes off, pulling back the throttle. Simple enough and pretty much universal, I have heard it sipping expensive coffees in Parisian cafés of the 1st arrondissement, lying awake in dimly-lit hotel rooms by the Sukhomvit Road, beside market stalls in Hong Kong's Gage Street market, outside dodgy bars in Manila, resounding across the black nighttime hillscape of Kandy, through the unlit back alleys of Marrakech's souk. It is everywhere the same because people everywhere are the same – the only changeable thing is the weather.
As long as you are living in proximity to people who work, and even amongst people who don't, it is certain today this sound will be heard. Only one overriding condition chokes this sound, and that only partly – snow. Only the decidedly desperate are venturesome or desperate enough to face up to a bout with the treacherous and slippery white stuff. I have, however, seen mopeds skilfully ridden through lake-like puddles in tropical rain storms, umbrellas at the tilt, and even carefully and wobblingly managed through dangerous typhoons, but a simple, reasonably heavy snowfall usually forces the moped rider into a pedestrian.
Don't get me wrong, I quite like mopeds and have even ridden (and come off) a few, but the simple truth of the matter is that there is something heart-felt and sad about this sound, something that touches the deep discomfort about the dirty urbanity of humankind. It is compelling yet also disturbing and each time I experience it I am driven into an emotional sinaesthetic stupor.
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