Who needs a Zen garden, I've got a desktop fountain...

My artistic director and boss at The Pearl recently went on a trip tp Arizona to visit family and he came back with gifts for everyone in the office. Well, "gift" is more descriptive because we all received the same thing. A desktop tranquility fountain. I received the sort pictured on the left, pompously entitled "Steps," as if it were a long-forgotten work of the masters. The polyresin plastic of the fountain tries its best to simulate a craggy rock in the shape of a staircase.

I like to pretend the stairs were formed from a million years of trickling water flowing down the hardened face of a majestic cliff, depositing it's cargo of minerals and silt into the freshwater oasis in the middle of a steamy, desolate Arizona desert. It's a very tranquil picture.

But there is a small problem with this picture- it doesn't truly trickle, that is to say that I can't hear it. Instead I hear the faint hum of the fountains motor, a quiet hum in the back of my mind throughout the day. And yet I find this buzz even more peaceful than the make-believe picture in my head. What does that say about me? I find comfort in the constant frequency of the man-made. Flowing water is all well and good to look at, but the sound gives it life. It's the same reason why I keep the TV humming away when I'm alone without any intention of watching it or why the eerie quiet of a rural nighttime campout makes me feel uneasy. I think living with the incessant background music of electricity helps me to relax, knowing I'm connected to a million others all around me at any given moment in the city. I would go crazy living with pygmies or, even worse, those terrible Survivor contestants.

A friend once told me that if you asked a random sample of people to hum a single note and hold it, they would all fall within a very small area of the musical scale. That musical constant in everyone's head is exactly the same as the hum produced by the flow electricity. It's everywhere and it connects us all. I find that thought to be very tranquil indeed.

And to think, all that from a small plastic tchotchke found only in the Arizona desert or one small factory in China.