Resonance

The woman who comes to cook lunch was sitting out by the back door of the office separating wheat grains from their dry casings.  She was sifting them on a square, flat woven grass plate.  When I stopped to say hello and watch her for a bit, she asked about my piece of wood.  I said that I has still not found an axe, and she told me that she has an axe and a hammer at her house, and would bring them tomorrow.

I decided then that I would not use any electrical tools on that piece of wood - I wanted it to be free of that kind of noise and vibration.  And thinking about that, I got wondering if there's really any sense to the thought that every bit of energy that moves around, and that we move around, affects the surfaces they happen upon.

But maybe it's not just the surfaces; maybe it's also the depths.  And I got thinking about wood and its resonance...  From dry and woody to rich and bell-like, wood has different ways of singing - and who can say which wood sings the sweetest?  I guess it largely depends on the person listening for whatever specific "tap" is just right for the occasion...

Like a woman walking across a wooden floor in high heels, tapping wood upon wood creates a sound that emerges not only from the surfaces, but from within the wood itself - a character of sound that changes from one piece of wood to another not only because of the character of its surface, but also because of the wood grew, its imperfections, dimples and all the various ways that alter the inner vibrations passing through the "density" (the amount of space of passage) and stiffness (the ability or lack of ability to move those passages back and forth). It's like within a piece of wood are thousands of seashell mazes of space within them. Like organ pipes within, wood has its own way of creating its own personality of character of sound.

Less dense wood is less stable, and thus moves/vibrates more, creating a sense of dull softness.  Dense, stiff wood has an almost harshness of "ring".   Every piece of wood has its own natural frequency of vibration when noise of the collision of two pieces of wood send waves rushing through the wood...