This is the Sound of a Levee Being Built

February 10th, 2007 by Larry Smith  

As Josh was drawing the second part of the prologue, he called me with an interesting query: Should he draw a “sound” on the panel of his depiction of the levees breaking? Tricky question. We talked about it, wondering aloud: Is a sound too irreverent? If not, what sound, exactly, should it be? In the end, we decided to let the images speak for themselves. Comic makers and comic readers, what do you think about all this?

Speaking of sounds, I just heard a beautiful, maybe 30-second sound clip on NPR. A reporter from Jacksonville was reporting on the rebuild and found himself listening to a wonderful sound in the Lower Ninth Ward: the sound of the levee being rebuilt. “For the most part it was really quiet. And then out of the blue, this towering machine started pounding into the ground,” he says. “It was almost rhythmic, it sounded like music. There were three displaced residents who had come back to look at where their home used to be …. and they heard this sound and they linked their arms and they started dancing in the street.”

One Response

  1. Josh Neufeld

    That is a great sound; very musical. Almost has a cool house music beat to it. It just sounds optomistic!

Leave a Reply

The name you want displayed with your comment.

Emails are not published with comments (i.e., everyone won't see it).

Your Website. This is optional.


 
SMITH Magazine

SMITH Magazine is a home for storytelling.
We believe everyone has a story, and everyone
should have a place to tell it.
We're the creators and home of the
Six-Word Memoir® project.