AROUND 6am, the squealing of copulating rats—signalling a night-long verminous orgy on the rooftops of Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai gives way to the more cheerful sound of chirruping sparrows.
It's organized by Russell Ferguson, chief curator at the Hammer, and is accompanied by a telephone book-size catalog with devotional essays by a bunch of cheerful sound-art sages.
For all the cheerful sound bites -- like President Bush's promise of choice and President Clinton's promise of "health care that's always there" -- sooner or later people will find out how a health care proposal actually works, and the trade-offs it involves.
-THOMAS FULLER Sing louder around to the bells' cheerful sound, while our sports shall be seen on the echoing green.
The lyrical formula is cheerful, the sound is vaguely inspirational.
Michel Houellebecq readily admits that he enjoys attacking, insulting and provoking, so while it is not his style to look cheerful or sound optimistic, the French writer cannot fail to be chuckling at the reaction to his latest novel, "Plateforme".
The storm tore branches off oak trees more than a century old and did considerable damage to the house, but, when it was all over, the Calder mobile — a lignum-vitae disc delicately perched on a cigar-shaped lignum-vitae pole and sprouting flimsy wire stems and leaves — was still upright, the leaves fluttering languidly and making a cheerful tinkling sound as the disc revolved on the pole.
But the cheerful pop sound of Motown now seems like a cruelly ironic soundtrack to decline.
The sweet sound of a peewee-league coach delivering baseball clichés to his players is a particular pleasure: "Now, you played hard, and I know your parents want to know that, but next time I know you'll play harder and we'll win, right?" Wait — is that sound the "cheer, cheerful, charmer" song of the Eastern bluebird?
