I found myself in an office supply store after dark, dark coming early this time of year, mid-December. The plan was to purchase some take-out Chinese food around the corner for dinner, but first came this errand. I wandered the aisles, items large and small on shelves that occasionally flirted with the emptiness one might associate with bankruptcy. A palpable emptiness defined the place, a single floor taking up a substantial portion of a city block, yet nearly devoid of people. There were two other customers: one on his phone, the other standing in a corner saying "hello" repeatedly in hopes of earning the attention of the two present employees, one of whom was stationed at the register, the other also wandering the aisles. At times the five of us were spread out as if we had claimed some portion of the known territory as our own. The customer who wasn’t saying “hello” was on his phone narrating his day to someone else, what seemed to be a close friend. This customer apologized to the friend for having been “irrespective” of his interlocutor’s recent emails. I wandered over to what I came to understand was my corner of the store, from which I could barely hear the repeated hellos or the phone conversation, and in that emptiness a sound caught my ear — two sounds, in fact: a pair of repetitive clicks. I drew closer to several rows of hanging backpacks, all connected by lengthy cabling, and each affixed by a plastic alarm. I came to understand that this clicking was somehow the result of the shoplifting-prevention system. The clicks circumnavigated the modest gallery of backpacks, the pair of them running at ever so slightly different speeds, so they came in and out of phase with each other. In the background, amid the muffled sound of traffic and the rumble of the HVAC, you can just make out people talking, and as well as the sharp ping of a distant cash register.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro using the standard Voice Memos app.

Retail Phase

It hasn’t rained in ages, and then overnight the modest tides of the colloquial atmospheric river shifted, and drops began to accumulate on the ground. Around 3:45am, I wasn’t sleeping well, which is unusual for me. In retrospect, the rain must have begun, the unfamiliar nocturnal noises registering louder than they actually were. Likewise, after I woke, I wasn’t yet aware rain had fallen or, for that matter, continued to fall. Strange little plinks and pops registered as background texture, disparate as stray thoughts, until I raised a window blind and saw the gentle precipitation. The street in particular sounds different during the rain. Cars creep along like footsteps on Saran wrap, and they are more likely than generally to obey the nearby four-way stop sign. Far less chatter passes by, as morning walkers stay home, perhaps hoping for a respite later in the day. This goes as well for rattling skateboards and chiming bicycles. There is a squish and crunch and a mushy whir to the city when it is waking to the rain. This is what it sounds like, through the living room window, which overlooks the street from the second floor.

Recorded in San Francisco's Richmond District at 8:42am on Wednesday, December 17, 2025.

Play Misty

Early this morning, right when doing so became legal according to local noise ordinance standards, construction began down the block, by “down the block” meaning what was being attacked by a small army of workers was the entire next block and then continuing around its far corner and down the subsequent hill. The rattling was constant, like the world’s largest coffee grinder on a coarse setting. I set about recording the goings-on, but too many other morning noises conflicted. I set down my phone and got to work. The phone and I were eventually drawn back to the window by the sort of beeping that signals a vehicle is backing up. Each time this bulbous alert sounded, everything else quieted down: traffic, footsteps, construction clatter. It was real-world sidechain, in which the relative seeming volume of one set of sounds seemed to drop in inverse correlation with the rise of another sound, in this case the warning beeps. I never did manage to get a good recording of the rattle caused by all the hammering and digging, but if there is anything I am confident of, it is that this morning will not have been the last of that.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 9:20am on Thursday, December 19. 2026.

Block Chain

The drone and click and whir and rattle of the devices that populate home often recede into the background — at least until the machines emitting those sounds break. When they break, the rupture in service is evidenced by a change in tonality. Drone becomes whine, click becomes clatter, and whir becomes squeal. Until then, the sounds attain a level of familiarity that verges on the audible realm’s equivalent of near invisibility. In many cases, the sounds are not merely sounds, but hints at sounds, ventures toward sound. The noise of a dishwasher midway through a cycle hints at the internal oceanic turbulence. Same goes for a dryer and for a refrigerator. I wondered what our refrigerator sounds like from the inside, so I set my phone to record, put it on a shelf between some milk and hummus, and closed the door. The result, the fridge's internal monologue, feels like something in motion, like a long, slow conveyor belt going off into the distance. If you set this file to loop, the seam created when it repeats will display just how much higher the tone is at the end of the recording than at the beginning. This snippet is just a part of a longer recording, during which the pitch shifting is even more varied. The inner life of the refrigerator is, indeed, more compelling than might be suggested by the light drone one hears through walls from several rooms away.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 7:57am on Friday, December 19, 2026, in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

Internal Monologue

I go through these occasional spells of making frequent little field recordings of everyday sound. The word “spell” is appropriate, because the making of field recordings opens up the experience of listening in a way that is spellbinding. The more you record, the more you pay attention for things to record, and in turn the more sounds register with you, whether you elect to record them or not. Such was the case when I used the bathroom at a favorite Mexican restaurant after a fine meal of enchiladas, during which we were entertained by a fantastic mariachi trio performing on worn old instruments: an acoustic guitar, a massive guitarron (the six-string acoustic bass), and a trumpet. Each was battered from years of use, and the music sounded all the better for it — and so my ears were tuned to the opportunity afforded by beat-up machines when I locked the bathroom door behind me. The tiny, clean space was irradiated by this pummeling churn, the mix of hum and rattle that is the industrial-strength fan running at high speed. Only later, when listening back, did I even notice the clatter of dishes from the nearby kitchen, so lost was I in the hypnotic whir.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 7:57am on Sunday, December 21, 2026, in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Sound Bath(room)

Most of the field recordings that I post are almost exactly as I receive them at the end of the recording process: I hit record, I hit stop, and most of what happens in between is what I share. Which isn’t to say the audio is “pure” by any means. The device I elect to use for the recording, the time and circumstances when I choose to record, the (usually) continuous clip of 30 seconds I select from within the longer recording — all of these elements, among others, are beyond the bounds of anything that might be self-described as purism. The editing process in particular lends an aspect of self-reflection (even, at times, of what George Eliot taught me to term self-rebuke). When recording the sound emitted inside my refrigerator, for example, I immediately chopped off both ends of the process: first, when I closed the door after placing my phone inside the fridge, and second, when I opened the door to extract my phone. In between those mirror-image poles was a minute or so of sound, from which I then extracted what seemed, to me, like prime climate-controlled droning. Later, however, I kept thinking about the recording process, and I returned to what hadn’t made the initial cut. I combined the two ends into one half-minute whole. The clunky percussion of the fridge drawer and door being shut and, then, opened has a industrial-grade vibrancy. While its jittery, stuttering aspect places it in stark contrast to the monotone of the internal hum of the fridge, these two sets of sounds share a welcome practical simplicity, the beauty of an everyday mechanism at various stages of its utilization.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 7:57am on Friday, December 19, 2026, in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

Start Stop

There was a break in the storm, a break between storms. A few days earlier, fire had taken out the city’s power, and now water threatened to do the same. The “atmospheric river,” the “Pineapple Express,” the potential “bomb cyclone” — so many colorful names for what amounted to endlessly grey days. An urban hike to the bay served as an unintentionally ironic way to spend the time when rain wasn’t prohibitively pouring — a walk between the raindrops, as the song goes. Being outside felt good, even as the gathering clouds encouraged a near-term retreat. At the water, the waves seemed more powerful than usual, a microcosm of the week’s weather: fierce pounding, followed by relative quiet, then more water-on-land violence. They're called “breakers” for a reason. I raised my phone and hit the red record button, and almost instantly a distant emergency vehicle’s siren inserted itself, underlining the severity of current circumstances. Listening back to the recording, after I got home, I knew to expect that siren, and still I had to restart the track a few times, because I wasn’t certain if the siren I heard was coming out of my speakers or leaking in from outside, where clouds grew darker by the minute.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 3:56pm on Wednesday, December 24, 2025, at Baker Beach in San Francisco.

Storm Breakers

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