thank god for the truck

It seems like most of my posts here tend to be more about sound than about music. I’m afraid it might be getting tedious for you. Nevertheless, it’s all I’ve got today. I am too traumatized to make a good story out of it, so I’ll just say what happened. I watched a shootout unfold this afternoon below my window in my alley and I watched a man kill another man. I watched him shoot his gun around the white truck and then I watched the gun in his hand as he got into a car in the parking spot next to the car next to mine and I watched the car slowly drive off as I called nine one one. A few minutes later from my steps I watched them pull the guy out from between the truck and the dumpster and put him into the ambulance. They said when they turned him over he’d been shot multiple times, at least once straight through the heart. It turned out to be a double homicide – another guy was dumped at a nearby hospital with a gunshot to the head a few minutes after the two cars left the scene.

What surprised me in the hours that followed as I was questioned by police and detectives was how much of my story relied on information that I got from what I heard rather than what I saw. I heard the initial gunshots that sounded enough like fireworks that it took me a minute to realize it was a different sound, but it was this difference that caused me to turn around and look down on the scene. I knew the shooting started in the other part of the alley because I could tell from the acoustics. I knew there was either only one gun or the guys had similar guns because the gunshots all sounded the same. I heard lots of shouting. I heard someone saying, “Get in the car! Get in the car!” I heard the car driving slowly, not quickly. (that was weird) I heard a girl shouting “Hang on! The ambulance is coming!”

Even more interesting was how I could literally feel my audio memories morphing into visual memories, as if I’d actually seen something I’d only heard. I had to consciously work to prevent that from happening.

All I keep thinking is how grateful I am for the truck parked there. If not for the truck, I would not only have seen the gunman, but I would have also seen his victim(s?) get shot before my eyes, and I think that would have been too much for me.