Hands, Sound Waves, & Time

Hi, it’s me – Andrew Couch, Co-Founder of Sound Legacy, and this is not our Newsletter. To be clear, it’s a blog. But I don't like the word blog, so I call it a “Newsletter,” not because it’s particularly full of “news,” but because the word “Newsletter” is both familiar and non-threatening. Sort of a heather-grey sweater of a word. One you can count on existing without causing fear or anxiety. The kind of word that is nearly meaningless outside of the context of an email or printed materials you might someday use to light a campfire.

Alas, I’m not here to discuss why I call this missive what I call it. Instead, the goal is to consider the following: The value of Storytelling, The Human Need to Preserve Legacy, & The Fact That Each of us Will Someday Be Dead Forever.

Now, to that last point, one does not wish to intrude upon or cause a ruckus with your belief system. In fact, I have no quarrel with any belief system so long as it does not require that I believe it, too. What I mean by “Dead Forever” is that someday, you will no longer be here to interact with the living beings who survive you. What you believe happens to the soul/energy/spirit/hamster behind the control knobs of consciousness is frankly none of my business. My focus is on how you preserve what is important to you so that the living beings you leave behind will remember your story and your voice. With that, I would like to tell you the lore of the Sound Legacy logo.

Nearly 40,000 years ago, on the island we now call Sulawesi, a band of your ancestors were busy in a cave. They were not necessarily hiding or seeking warmth and safety, though they likely found it. If they were cooking anything, it was in much the same spirit as you, or I might heat up a meal for lunch. No, these curious and interesting distant relatives were doing something even more familiar to us than cooking meat over a fire or hiding from hungry beasts – they were telling stories and attempting to preserve them.

Before I talk about this cave, imagine you have in your possession only what you or the people within your social circle can hunt, gather, or make from scratch. That includes clothing, bedding, utensils, tools, food, entertainment, and anything I forgot to include in a sentence that is already too long. If I were to apply those criteria to my current social circle, I would be pretty uncomfortable trying to keep warm with only the memory of how convenient shopping was. Our ancestors, on the other hand, had to figure out everything with nothing ready-made for another 30,000 years. Animals had to be hunted, herbs and plants had to be gathered, comfort had to be crafted, not purchased, and entertainment had to be imagined first, then sought after. With all that going on, our predecessors still found time to make more copies of themselves, pass along ideas and ideals to those copies, and imagine innovations in every category they could invent. One of those innovations, the one I’m most interested in, included the way they passed along ideas – specifically, cave art.

On the limestone walls of the ancient cave in Sulawesi, you will find a painting depicting three guys hunting a pig. Not, to be sure, the most interesting story ever told around a fire (although the pig is quite huge relative to the tiny guys). But exaggerated hunting stories aside, it’s the way the story was recorded that has my attention and represents much more than the first known example of representational art.

In another cave, not far from the story of the one colossal pig and the three little guys, we find something even more interesting than a hunting scene - a series of human hand prints. This motif repeats in ancient cave art across the globe, and the method of achieving this effect is thought to be similar, regardless of the region where it is found. A human hand is placed against the wall while the person to whom it is attached (or someone else with better technique) blows ochre onto the wall, thus creating a perfect outline of the hand in question. A curious thing to do, no?

As we look back into this tiny keyhole of the past, we have to rely on the modern mind to fathom what these images mean. Our brains, layered and muddled by generations of convenience, tribulations of increasing complexity, knowledge of the atom, concepts of other universes, and quantum theories most of us can’t possibly hope to understand, are odd instruments to bring to bear on this question. But bring it to bear, we must. Because looking at those hands, in particular, I can’t help seeing someone desperate to be remembered. A grandfather with a missing digit tells the story of his time as a hunter and the loss of a loved one. Or perhaps a parent helps a sickly child mark the wall with her tiny palm to commemorate her abbreviated stay on the planet. Regardless of the story we chose to derive from these images today, there is little question that they have been gazed upon by many more people than the ones who crafted them could have imagined. Talk about a family legacy!

So, when I thought about how I might represent my hopes, dreams, and ideals for the Sound Legacy project, my mind consistently referenced the images of hands painted on cave walls - Mankind’s earliest attempt at archival storytelling. My goal was to blend the image of the splayed-out hand print interwoven with the predominant archival mediums of our day – sound and color images. You will notice in the image below the waveform pattern of a recorded voice (this pattern is based on a recording of someone saying, “Hi, it’s me”). The gradient of the color, from the red of ochre to a blue that is rare and difficult to find in nature, represents the evolution of visual storytelling. The combination of those elements is what I hope to do with this business and what I think the human animal has been trying to do for as far back as we can find evidence – Make the subject feel “seen” and give the viewer/listener someone to see for as long as they can.

Are you interested in preserving your story or your voice? Do you know someone whose story you want to paint onto the limestone walls for future generations to see? While I’m clearly professionally biased and frankly obligated to recommend it, I’m personally curious to get involved. Please reach out anytime to begin your Sound Legacy journey.

We’re looking forward to it.