Pet Sounds: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department reflect on a piece of music or song. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Headspace” series.] [Revisit the “Ongoing” series.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.]

The sound of you closing your door stealthily. The sound of your heels pressing on the woollen carpet. The sound of you dabbing eau de toilette on your wrists. The sound of you biting relentlessly on the eraser head. The sound of you typing your new address. The sound of you drawing a non-existent emoji on the back of a recipe, marked with a coffee stain. The sound when the arm of our turntable retracts itself automatically after finished playing the last song. The sound of epiphany as I heard the faint sound of dust falling on the ground.

As Autonous turned into a bird, you stood there and laughed. Toying on the slight difference of “Jing” in the pronunciation of “應聲” in Cantonese, you mispronounced “Jing1” instead of “Jing3” as expected. It somehow becomes a command to answer the sounds. Enchanted, I know I need to make a sound now. With a split second of wavering belief, the sound we uttered turned into a question. Should we answer the sound? Chuckles and ec—ec—ec—cho—oo—oes.

These are the sounds I ‘sampled’: https://goo.gl/f5mTP9

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Suzanne Lai is a BA graduate in Stylistics and Comparative Literature (Class of 2014). [Click here to read all entries by Suzanne.]