“I was a sunburnt pagan now. I felt privy to mysteries.”
― William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
Geophony refers to the sounds produced by non-biological natural sources, such as wind, rain, waves, and thunder.
What we call the smell of the ocean is dimethyl sulfide. In our heads, we made up everything else.
We experience physical phenomena as something more than sound, more than smell, more than matter. We give them names, memories, meanings. We weave them into nostalgia and fate.
And yet there is no mystery in the things themselves. Only chemistry and the wind.
Go give it all the love you’ve got.
