A moment of synthesis prompted by listening to a podcast draft posted by Jennifer Edbauer arose as I was poking around the LOC prints and photographs collection. I ran into this picture of sound made visible. The LOC only has a thumbnail online, so I googled up the larger version at a site called Privateline.com. This tidbit resonated with questions I have about phenomenological composing--feeling and moving, physically as we write.

Sound waves are acoustic waves, with no electrical component. They are simply vibrations in the air, a physical pressure made by the utterance of the speaker.

I love that phrase, "physical pressure made by the utterance of the speaker." We tend to translate movement wrought through discourse into abstract terms--changing the views of listeners, prompting written response, shifting policy--intellectual reactions to the linguistic core of the statement. The image and blockquote suggest other possibilities.

If you'll permit a bit of hurdy gurdy digression ("The association . . . is obvious, since both are played with [by] a crank"*), I'll display another image from the Privateline site. The inference is that waves roll meta through the spaces of the universe, so that our own small disturbances given voice never work in a vacuum but mix with the invisible rhythm of the waves all around.

Visible light is only one small part of the omnipresent electromagnetic field or spectrum, that great, universal energy force that constantly washes over and through us.

I can only vouch for myself in saying that word writing (and reading), when it's good, taps into the wave world in a physical way. But I can suppose that sound writing offers a variation on the phenomenon, perhaps one less removed than silent text from physical waves (primordial or other). And, as a last digression, I'll argue with this image--which may or may not depict the disruption of sound visually.