I slept almost straight away and had normal dreams and it was all good, until around 11.30 pm. Today is Sunday, last night was therefore Saturday night and here in Hurghada Saturday night is a big night. For most people who live here Friday is the weekend and marks the end of the week, so Thursday night is their Friday night. But Hurghada is a tourist town so the resorts and clubs cater to the tourists.
As I have said before, my apartment block is very close to Sheraton Street. Even though the street I am on is very quiet, Sheraton Street is busy until around 3 am. I've got used to this, my night time sounds have gone from distant traffic and close birdsong to very close traffic and horns beeping and the rather mournful sound of the boat horns.
But on Saturday nights the sounds intensify and added is the sound of the music from the night clubs. This is heard every night and I usually don't even notice it any more, but Saturday nights it can be very loud. There are also searchlights that swing through the sky every night from one of the beaches, South Beach I think it is but I don't see that after I go to bed and I quite like to watch it from my balcony.
So what was different last night? The clubs are close enough that I can often hear whole songs and not just the bass, especially when the volume is a bit lower. But last night they cranked up the volume and I was woken by the sound of drums. This is on its own not a bad thing, a good drummer is great to listen to. I don't know if this was live music or recorded, I don't know if there was more to it than just the repetitive drumming that I heard - I assume there was or the people in the club would have revolted! What I head was the same drum melody, over and over again.
Have you ever heard something that put all your nerves on edge and made you want to smash something? A sound so irritating that you felt like your skin was being peeled off bit by bit? A sound so annoying that you just wanted to go and stop it, somehow, anyhow and homicide seemed like a viable option?
That was what the drumming was to me last night. I entertained visions of tracking down the source - not knowing which club it was coming from but figuring it couldn't be hard to follow a sound that loud and annoying - and eliminating it somehow. If it was live music I was imagining impaling the drummer with one of his sticks. The less aggressive method I envisioned was to find the speakers and cut the wires. I planned on going with whichever one felt right at the time.
Fortunately for all concerned the music changed and the drum melody stopped and all was ok in the world again. With only the cars and horns and far less irritating music I went back to sleep and didn't wake again until morning, when I realised it probably wasn't a drummer at all but just the bass amped up and obliterating the rest of the music.
We all have eyes and ears and they work with differing levels of efficiency depending on the person and possible malfunctions with either sense. Some people have problems with their vision or their hearing. For those with fully functional vision and hearing the experience is still different. Even though we are made the same way, ours brains interpret things differently.
Some people have a highly developed sense of colour and can see variation in shades which to others looks exactly the same. Likewise with hearing, some people - especially musicians or others who have had extensive training in which their hearing is important - can hear shades of sound where to others it is just a noise. Some people like certain types of music which to others is a horrible sound. We are all individuals and our experience and environment dictates how the receptors in our brains interpret the information they receive.
I'm pretty sure I was the only person lying awake last night feeling my insides twisting up and growing thorns as the music irritated me more and more. And this being Egypt where they are all pretty nocturnal I was in truth probably the only one trying to sleep anyway!
Did you know there is a condition called synesthesia, in which people have an involuntary pairing of different senses. For some, sounds are linked to colours. By this I mean that for some people sounds have colour. People with this may see different colours for different sounds. For some it is triggered by music with the notes a different colour. Some people have perfect pitch not because they hear the notes so clearly but because they see the colours of the notes. How cool is that?? Some people see letters and numbers in different colours. What a great world that would be, I truly wish I could do that. Then the script in front of my eyes would be in colour! There are others that taste words and each word has a different taste. It's a cross wiring in the brain that causes two senses to work together.
I have not idea if I have a form of synesthesia. For me, I see sounds as letters and words except for music. I do see music as colours but not all the time and not enough that I even thought about it until I read about the condition. Last nights experience was jagged streaks of yellow and black. Discordant and uncomfortable like the music. Bagpipe music is green, all brass instruments are golden. But sounds, cars on the street and horns and animals - when I hear sounds like that I see the words in my mind associated with them. I see whoosh, beep, meow inside my head. And I hear noises for actions that are silent, like changing the television station, I hear a beep every time I press the button on the remote and see stars coming off the beep too, like little exclamation points. When I see the leaves on my little gardenia on the balcony being blown in the breeze (when the door is shut and I can't actually hear anything) I hear a swishing sound and see little strokes coming off the sound too. Ok you know what? Now that I'm writing this all down I'm beginning to realise just how strange I really am. I think I'd better stop now!
ANYWAY, I actually wanted to give you the link to my new little book, a wee little bit of fiction on how my street cat Sabrina came to be alone. Go take a look, if it's not free now it will be in another few hours - it seems to start the free promotion at different times in different parts of the world. The look inside bit unfortunately stops at the end of the introduction but the story follows and there are pictures too :)
Now it's time for me to go start work on the real book, Zora's Dawn.
Here's the link for the little book, Sabrina's Story:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OLYHA5Y
A world of colours :)
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