"It is too bad that sound waves decay. If they did not, we would still be able to hear melodies by Mesomedes, and Odo of Cluny playing his organistrum. We would hear extinct toxodons, and prehistoric horses wearing pottery bells, and dead bats chewing crackly flies. We could hear the goats of the past - the old English milch goats, the fatlings of Bashan, thirsty peacock goats, Finnish Landrace goats bleating for their kids, baby Göingegets grizzling for their mothers, and wild mountain ibexes protesting hoarsely at being made to live in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The world, full of past sound, would be like the sky, full of past light. The world would be like the mind, for which there is no once."