(dave e)

shiver me timbers

i entertain one reckless indulgence when natalie goes abroad. i leave the bedside radio on all night. who knows what that does to my head, really, but i'm happy falling asleep to as it happens.

this habit began when n was in east africa for a few months a couple of years ago. bbc world service, part of the overnight lineup at wamu, has been a fairly good source for african news. it can be difficult to find a reliable connection to the other side of the world sometimes (just for kicks, try to find on online news source for, say, kigoma tanzania; doesn't count if it's only updated once every 17 days). that program helped me fall asleep for three months. so now, i still turn the radio on.

that's an overlong introduction to the point of this entry. at some point last night, i woke up at an odd moment. bbc has a story on infrasound, that is, tones below 20Hz that are apparently capable of stimulating very strange phenomena.

But in a controlled experiment in which infrasound was pumped into a concert hall, UK scientists found they could instil strange feelings in the audience at will.

These included an extreme sense of sorrow, coldness, anxiety and even shivers down the spine.

it seems that geological activity can be one source of infrasound, which may explain reports of poltergeists; organs are responsible for spiritual sensation in church.

the line that, well, gave me chills in my 1/4-awake-wee-hours-stupor, not included in the linked version of the story: composers have for some time used infrasound at "apocalyptic moments" in their works.

nothing like ghosts and apocalypse to soothe the listener back to sleep.

Posted by dave at September 9, 2003 10:25 AM | TrackBack