Paris
The Sounds of Home: Part 4
Welcome friends, new and old!
If you’re just joining us today, let me take a moment and share a little background. About a month ago, and inspired by my latest illustrated essay, I invited readers of Dandelion Seeds to answer this question:
What are the sounds of home for you?
More than thirty people responded, and I’m delighted to be sharing their stories this week, in a new mini-series called The Sounds of Home.
One of my favorite things about the series has been the range of textures in your sounds of home.
From birdsong and rainfall, to the sound of “wood rolling over wood” as a family makes dumplings together, I love the different rhythms and tones each sound offers, like the families of instruments that make up an orchestra.
In today’s story, Ashley gives us another texture to consider — that of language, and the way that hearing a particular language can help us feel more at home.
Other stories spoke to something similar. For
, the sound of home is “the sounds of kids happily playing outside while grass is being mowed.” And for Amanda, who grew up in Australia, the sound of home is “a cricket ball hitting a bat, but more specifically the gentle cheer and round of applause when someone gets out.”I find that beautiful — that the sound of home can simply be the sound of another human voice, and of the people who make up our community, helping us find our place in the world.
Thank you for being here this week, and see you tomorrow for the grand finale!
Candace
When I think of Paris sounds, I hear music...jazz, especially Claude Bolling and his many collaborators, classic café accordion songs, Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour, and street performers of all kinds. And my favorite Impressionistic and Post-Impressionist classical composers: Debussy, Satie, Saint-Saëns...just to name a few. I love French music.
I'll be sharing this with my daughter, who just spent 10 months studying abroad in France (we live in the States). She's been home a few months and misses France so much (and the sound of the language, which she's studied for six years). So glad to find your publication this week, love your art and the generosity of this series.