This boy’s sousaphone spreads dark chocolate music across the field. His college band plays The Stars and Stripes Forever. Stops. Starts again.
Water sprinklers swish across the grass. Students pass by, laughing, talking to each other; shouting, screaming at their telephones.
An electric jack-hammer breaks the air like a machine gun. Air conditioners on the buildings hum and purr like sleeping cats.
Outside in the street, cement trucks thud and clank across broken pavement. Hundreds of small motorcycles roar by like chain-saws. It’s all deafening.
A little girl on the street holds her hand over her ears and cries.
Intermittently, in the rare quiet spaces, you can hear plaintive electronic song of ice-cream tricycles.
Go back a hundred years – to Dumaguete’s sounds in 1913.
The Sousaphone is still playing, and the college band is still playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
There are no water sprinklers. Students still pass by, talking, laughing, but more quietly- it’s easy to be heard. There are no cell phones. No radios.
There are no air-conditioners. It’s hot inside. Hand fans swish the air.
Outside in the street, heavy wooden wagons clatter on dirt and gravel surfaces. Horses snort and whinny. Hundreds of iron horseshoes clop and clang along.
One primitive motor-car passes by, smoking and popping and backfiring. Everyone on the street stops to look at it.
A little girl on the street holds her hands over her ears and cries.
When the traffic passes, you can hear children playing in the distance, the sound of steam whistles from the passing boats at sea.
Go back another century, to the sounds of Dumaguete in 1813.
No college band is playing. There is no college. On the porch of a large house beside the sea, a small rondalla is playing. A woman sings in Spanish, clapping her hands in time.
The rondalla ceases. Everyone goes inside the house to eat. You can hear the clank of plates and silver on the table, and quiet laughter.
A solitary horseman passes by outside, noiselessly, in the dust of the road.
A little girl comes from the house, closing the door behind her. She stands quietly on the porch, looking out to sea. There’s no one else in sight. The only sounds are the wind in the trees and the waves breaking on the shore.
A 21st century boy with a sousaphone would be bored to death.
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Author’s email: john.stevenson299@gmail.com