Beneath the ocean's surface, a symphony ripples and rolls, ricochets and hums—and whales pour their songs into the deep soundscape like streams of molten silver.

“In the great silence of the brackish waters behind our homes,” he heard the voices of myriad unknown creatures joining together in something between the buzzing of the nervous system in an anechoic chamber and the wistful moan of the gyaling, the Buddhist oboe. He heard photosynthesis itself — the regular rhythm of plants exchanging oxygen through

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