The Dam, The Renaissance, da Vinci and the sound of silence

The Renaissance 1450-1600 introduced the idea of music with parts that are independent of one another--or the concept of polyphony. Music then became more complex, there were more things to hear. This layering of sound needed a kind of visualization for it to be "heard." Or, in other words, sound became multi-sensory.

Da Vinci noted two types of visualization, "Post-imagining--the imagining of things that are past," and "preimagining--the imagining of things that are to be."

In 1931, inside the diversion tunnels at the Hoover Dam, there also was this kind of urgent, consistent, polyphony of sound, with drills running, power shovels removing muck, the jumbo rig hauling men forwards and backwards as generators and compressors edged on. It was sound that could spark memory in a man. For it seems the unfamilar polyphony soon enough became familiar. And with this familiarity so etched in the mind, it would forever after quicken a memory.

In the midst of all this, dam workers were constantly looking into the throat of the tunnel, imagining the end way through. The polyphony of sounds combined with this strain in the direction of their visualization may have helped them push harder at their jobs than they would have ever expected.

Under layers of rock were layers of sound and layers of men in self-possessed silence, listening by way of visualization.

Dam Daze

Sometimes I imagine the heat of it all, down in the canyon, mid summer. I imagine walking inside one of the diversion tunnels, where the stale air was said to reach 140 degrees or more. I see myself riding a huge jumbo rig back up against the rock inside this tunnel, handing off the dynamite or Hercules to my partner to set into the rock. The sweat is dripping and we don't notice it anymore, our job is getting done. Our work at hand is so important to us we nearly faint from heat exhaustion but barely notice the stagger in our walk, the weak grip we take as we exit the tunnel waiting for the blast to complete...
The exciting times of working and living so close to the bone, being so taxed, unaware of anything else but the work...this is not the life of kings and queens, but rather of somebody that has left behind peaceful desires for a paycheck and yes, the knowledge I've done a good job. Yet, being in the tunnel, suffocating from heat, sweating to exhaustion, muscle to muscle, the heaviness of it all, it seems as if it's all I ever wanted. Otherwise, knowing the ridiculousness of the job, (cutting into walls of canyon rock for what good reason but to build a dam that would "control" a river for the benefit of development?) wouldn't I walk right out? Take a ferry across river, hike my way into the mountains, live off the land as I went? But nobody did that. And if they did they were no hero.
Sometimes I imagine what we'd be like if we didn't follow what we were made to believe. Yet we do follow...and we do the work...and at the end of the day we are too tired for much dreaming. And then we return...into the heat mist of the next day...