cliodhna’s wave

There was a city once, a long time ago, that was built by a people who worshipped the wind. They built the city to pay homage to the wind, they constructed every street carefully so the wind would whistle or howl or hum or simply blow straight and hard banging bells and clattering signs and causing windows to rattle as it passed.

There was a bridge in the city called the singing bridge. It was built of hollow pipes of different lengths and angled in different directions and the sound of the pipes and the combination of the sounds would tell the people of the city where the wind was blowing from and how hard it was blowing.

There was a narrow street that curved and twisted and the wind would run up it whistling and shouting from the sea, carrying the smell of the sea and the noises of the returning sailors from their fishing trips and the boom of the waves on the hulls of the big boats from far away. The children would come running down the street then, looking for fathers or brothers or the strange merchants who came from over the water with their goods to sell that smelled exotic and cost more than they would see in a year.

The roofs were tiled with wood, narrow slats that were only attached on one end and it took a strong wind to get them dancing but when it did, it seemed like the city would take off into the air and fly away.

The city was carefully built with streets facing the direction of prevailing winds, designed to take the wind into the heart of the city, spin it round and send it off in another direction. The people of the city could tell practically to a day what time of year it was by the noises that surrounded them and indeed they were so used to constant noise that, on the rare days when there was no wind, they stayed indoors and talked in hushed voices or if they had an errand to run they would move quickly looking over their shoulder for fear of the silence.

Every house had wind chimes hanging from the corner of the roofs. Wind chimes of hollow wood that clunked with low notes against each other, heavy, slow ponderous vibrations or wind chimes of perfectly tuned metal from low to high bell-like perfect roundness that would cause anybody walking under them to stop and close their eyes to feel it properly inside themselves. In a street the wind chimes were tuned along each house so walking down a street was walking from one chord to another of a slowly changing melody.

Song birds were bred for their voices and competition was fierce between the owners as to which bird had the clearest voice, the most limpid melody, the most satisfying roundness of tone. The best birds sounded like water gurgling through a brook, like an urn of fine metal filled with water and tapped. Try it; you will see what I mean. Gold was exchanged for breeding rights of the best songsters and eggs sold before they were even hatched.

The city thrived for centuries but alas the people forgot their worship of the wind and slowly the singing bridge became a home for bird’s nests and debris and became silent and the roof tiles were replaced with ceramic hardwearing tiles that did not rattle and slap. Noisy signs were more firmly fastened to their supports and some buildings were demolished and others built that did not pay attention to the layout or wind direction. The narrow curving street that brought the smell of the sea to the heart of the city was closed, blocked and forgotten about. The wind became an annoying factor rather than one to be used and enjoyed and slowly the past glory of the city was forgotten and became just another noisy smelly port city where the sailors would stop and move on from as quickly as they could.

The old people, who were the only ones who listened anymore, were the ones who remembered the stories their great grandparents had told them and were the only ones who wondered when they met for their morning coffee or afternoon tea were the stories true, of a city built for a worship of the wind and a city that sang from every rooftop and street corner, a city that was proud and shone and laughed and chimed and had a different song for every day of the year.