When you live in Mexico City, moments of silence occur when the metropolis’s noise wanes, but they are always strewn with a hum. It may be the humming of refrigerators throbbing in unison, filtering out of the cracks of house doors. The housing of these appliances cause the objects inside them to reverberate like sizeable drums. In large numbers, they slightly shake the land, by letting out deep vibrations that first thud on your body and then on the ears. It can be the sound of electric pumps installed in buildings to shoot water up from the underground to the cisterns on the rooftops. It can be the voices of people chit-chatting, coming from different directions to your hearing field. It can also be the humming of electric cables strewn along streets, suspended in the air and meeting around the sidewalks’ steeping posts. The cables let out screeches, as if about to burst into a short circuit. When traveling, electricity also emits a humming through the light sockets, when the voltage fluctuates momentarily. [...]
Hum
in ENCYCLOPEDIA