![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Can you hear the Van Hool sing?
Aug. 15th, 2009 11:25 pmIn the last few seasons during which I regularly attended Palace home games I often experienced a feeling of foreboding during the latter part of the second half of the game. As introspective then as now I attempted to analyse this mood, both in the moment and later, but I was unable to conclusively attribute a cause.
It wasn't an unease prompted by the prospect of the train back to Balham being delayed or cancelled - in fact under BTP guidance Connex usually laid on an extra or two. Nor was it fear of ambush in the streets surrounding the ground: save for mild skirmishing on the occasion of fixtures with Millwall and Charlton, things were pretty placid by then, dispersal taking place in an atmosphere of mutual indifference. Apprehension over the outcome of the game itself might have had some effect were it not for the complete irrelevance of the score to the sensation, much as we often ended up pegged out in our own penalty area desparately deflecting corner after corner.
In fact, the feeling seemed not informed by and engaged with the spectacle, but primal, visceral. I now believe almost literally so.
To beat the pedestrian and vehicular traffic around the ground just prior to and following the final whistle the away coaches would park up along the slope of the Holmesdale Road behind the terracing at around twenty minutes from the end of the game. They would arrive en masse, having been corralled some distance away.
In its terracing days the Holmesdale end was open to the elements. In quiet moments when the crowd noise lulled the coach engines could be heard to emanate from behind, left running for the duration. A low monotone thrum, whether you could hear it or not, it was always there.
For that final stage of the game, it was always there.
Sound has its offensive uses. The IDF have used bursts of noise at extreme volume to scatter crowds in Palestine, while very loud music has been offensively deployed by the US military in Fallujah and the Kent Police at the Kingsnorth environmental protest.
'Mosquito' high frequency sound emitters are applied to suburban shopping parades to disperse gatherings of young people (adults are usually unable to hear such a high noise, which is why teenagers then sample the noise to be used as a surreptitious ringtone for their mobile phones).
At the other end of the spectrum, sonic cannons have been developed to distress and incapacitate. Effects of noise at the bottom end of human perception have been offered to explain some perceived supernatural 'haunting' phenomena. Manipulative film makers often use low frequency sound to disturb the viewer: e.g. as accompaniment to the sweeping camera in Gaspar Noé's 'Irréversible', and in the horror genre.
I now think it was the rumble of coach engines, in particular that element of the sound below the level of conscious perception, that caused me the feeling of disquiet at around half-past four every other Saturday afternoon, years ago.
It wasn't an unease prompted by the prospect of the train back to Balham being delayed or cancelled - in fact under BTP guidance Connex usually laid on an extra or two. Nor was it fear of ambush in the streets surrounding the ground: save for mild skirmishing on the occasion of fixtures with Millwall and Charlton, things were pretty placid by then, dispersal taking place in an atmosphere of mutual indifference. Apprehension over the outcome of the game itself might have had some effect were it not for the complete irrelevance of the score to the sensation, much as we often ended up pegged out in our own penalty area desparately deflecting corner after corner.
In fact, the feeling seemed not informed by and engaged with the spectacle, but primal, visceral. I now believe almost literally so.
To beat the pedestrian and vehicular traffic around the ground just prior to and following the final whistle the away coaches would park up along the slope of the Holmesdale Road behind the terracing at around twenty minutes from the end of the game. They would arrive en masse, having been corralled some distance away.
In its terracing days the Holmesdale end was open to the elements. In quiet moments when the crowd noise lulled the coach engines could be heard to emanate from behind, left running for the duration. A low monotone thrum, whether you could hear it or not, it was always there.
For that final stage of the game, it was always there.
Sound has its offensive uses. The IDF have used bursts of noise at extreme volume to scatter crowds in Palestine, while very loud music has been offensively deployed by the US military in Fallujah and the Kent Police at the Kingsnorth environmental protest.
'Mosquito' high frequency sound emitters are applied to suburban shopping parades to disperse gatherings of young people (adults are usually unable to hear such a high noise, which is why teenagers then sample the noise to be used as a surreptitious ringtone for their mobile phones).
At the other end of the spectrum, sonic cannons have been developed to distress and incapacitate. Effects of noise at the bottom end of human perception have been offered to explain some perceived supernatural 'haunting' phenomena. Manipulative film makers often use low frequency sound to disturb the viewer: e.g. as accompaniment to the sweeping camera in Gaspar Noé's 'Irréversible', and in the horror genre.
I now think it was the rumble of coach engines, in particular that element of the sound below the level of conscious perception, that caused me the feeling of disquiet at around half-past four every other Saturday afternoon, years ago.
