The Library of Maps, #16

THE SOUND PENCIL AND THE TRANSPARENT SCORES

For many years, people have visited the Sound Maps Room in the Library, some making this part of their daily routine.

In the center stands a small glass case, and visitors gaze down admiringly at the Sound Pencil.

Behind are the two Transparent Scores suspended in the air by invisible threads from the ceiling.

Nearby are the famous Hearing Stations.

Visitors bring objects with them, and hours pass as they sit in the Hearing Stations listening to the sounds of their objects.

Later they try to describe to one another what they have heard, but it is virtually impossible, and so they come to a stuttering halt with “It was like … like … like … ”

All know, of course, the story of the Sound Pencil and the Transparent Scores.

II
It was a tale that began on the rim of a valley.

Here the Sound-Maker came regularly each day, looking down on the plateau of stony black earth with its river of molten silver meandering through it.

On one side was a makeshift hut where the Singer both lived and worked.

Each day the Singer would look up at the Rim to see if the Sound-Maker was still there.

A day would have been incomplete without this sight.

It was a small open book with strange lines of indecipherable markings.

A poem?

A message from the Singer?

A score?

The Sound-Maker was never sure.

Yet she would often take out this book and try—awkwardly and unsuccessfully—to make notations about the Rim’s sounds.

Unbeknownst to the Sound-Maker, however, the Singer was busily at work on a second gift.

One day at noon, under the fierce sun on the plateau, the object was ready to be lifted out of its wooden mold.

It was a thin column of silver, about two inches tall, an indentation at one end for the Sound-Maker’s hand, and a thin point at the other.

It was a Sound Pencil.

To test it, the Singer placed an orchid in front of the Sound Pencil.

For a long time, he stood enraptured, listening to the orchid’s sweet, intermittent, low-pitched sound.

The next day the Sound-Maker came to the Rim and found a box wrapped in orange paper.

Inside was a small silver object.

When she held it in her hand a low sound, almost like a bass, began to rumble.

Enraptured, just as the Singer had been, the Sound-Maker pointed the Sound Pencil upward.

Sounds surged toward her.

She saw in her mind’s eye a world composed not of images but only fragrances.

For a long time, with her eyes closed, the Sound-Maker conjured up the sounds of the oceans, the mountains, and the valleys that compose the Fragrant World.

When the Sound-Maker, exhausted, finally opened her eyes, the valley below her was illuminated by moonlight, and she realized that hours had elapsed.

The air was very fragrant.

The next morning, the winds brought the fragrance down from the Rim,
and throughout the day the Singer was bathed in it.

He also heard distant sounds from the Rim, and realized that the Sound-Maker was experimenting with the Sound Pencil,

Pointing it at object after object and creating—sometimes strident, sometimes seductive, sometimes steady, and sometimes broken, but always different—sounds.

Finally he heard nothing, and he understood that the Sound-Maker was now working with silence.

That evening the Sound-Maker asked herself what she could make by way of thanks to the Singer.

She decided finally on a worthy gift.

A score, the first she had ever written.

This almost transparent score was born by the wind until it reached the silver river where it divided itself, and floated toward the two shores.

With great delicacy, the Singer lifted one of the Transparent Scores out of the silver water.

It floated in the air, and the Singer began to play—occasionally glancing for guidance at the hovering score.

As the hours passed, the score faded in the sunlight but the Singer, who had had memorized it, continued to play with great certainty.

The Sound-Maker listened, astonished.

They were the sounds that she had once heard in a dream as a child, but
had never expected to hear again in her waking life as an adult.

After many days, the Singer stopped.

And what happened then?

III
Well, the sounds began to reverberate back and forth between the Rim and the river banks.

Back and forth until this day.

The molten river of silver continues to run in the Valley of Song.

And the Sound Pencil and Transparent Scores now reside in the Sound Maps Room, a specially constructed space in the Library of Maps.