Buzz Saw Afternoon

I’d gone for a walk and was listening to an audiobook, one that is largely set in London. I’d been alternating between reading the book and listening to it. Now I was walking through San Francisco while my head was in London, a different sort of alternating. At one point in the audiobook, I heard something, the sound of a violin, and I thought that was an interesting creative choice on the part of the recording’s producer or director. Except the sound wasn’t a violin, nor was it part of the audiobook. The sound was a buzz saw from a construction site, a residence half a block away. I paused the audiobook and took a few recordings of the buzz saw until I got one with the minimum of wind, chatty passersby, and traffic. This is on a clear, quiet day, no planes overhead, and the wind pretty chill, if not entirely still. The more I listened to the buzz saw on its own, the less it resembled a violin, but it was never any less musical than when I’d first heard it.

Recorded around 11:15am on an iPhone 17 Pro on Thursday, January 22, 2026, in San Francisco.