THE SOUND OF THE PAST
Travelling in Time
There are two things you will never forget, sometimes try as you might: the smells and the sounds that accompanied you as a child. The smells and the sounds that mattered.
The whiff of your mother’s perfume when you opened her wardrobe. Mixed with the smell of your father’s winter-coat. The aroma of fresh and still piping hot bread from the bakery opposite the church (you hated the church, you loved the bread so you always went to your religion classes to make sure you can a quarter of a loaf beforehand). The strange mélange of smells inside the kitchen cupboard where the peppercorn tang fought for supremacy with vanilla oil and cloves.
That unique smell of Berlin U-Bahn you first smelled some time in 1979 and recognised at once when you returned twenty one years later…
And then there are the sounds. The steady warbling of the coffee-grinder in the kitchen. Your neighbours’ old ebonite telephone ring-ringing behind the wall (by the time your family got their first phone they had begun to come in red, green and see-through already). The water gurgling in the iron radiator in your room.
Most of the smells are gone. So are most of the sounds. But thanks to the Internet the latter can be brought back to life.
This is what conservethesound makes possible for you. You might find some of your childhood preserved there. I most certainly did. At The Online Archive for Vanishing Sounds.
Enjoy travelling in time!