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I arose this morning to the beginnings of the week of independence celebrations in Chile (the actual date falling on the 18th but festivities proceeding before and after several days), eerily floating up through the cerros from the harbor. Valparaiso was quiet save for the deep-throated blasts of the foghorns on all the cargo ships and naval vessels in the bahia. It was truly a sound like I have never heard before — at first I thought it was just part of my early-morning dreaming, but was disabused of that notion after a good half-hour of rhythmic horn-calls, weaving in and out of harmony and dissonance. Throaty calls of commerce, pubescent and uniformed calls to arms, all shouting the same independencia song. What fun it must be to have been manning one of those horns, reaching deep into the hills in an orchestrated, controlled cacophony, silencing even the unsilenceable braying of the Valpo dogs. The stairs rang with sound, and I wondered why true patriotism was such a hard-sought virtue for us Americans.

Maybe it is because our celebration of independence has more to do with cheap explosions, and less to do with sound.

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