The belfry was the room where the bells lived. The top of the tower. Open arches on all four sides so the sound could escape. The belfry was designed for one purpose and the purpose was to let the sound out. Every other room in the building was designed to keep something in. The bedroom kept the family in. The vault kept the money in. The belfry kept nothing in. The belfry was the one room in the building that existed to give everything away.

The bell ringer climbed the stairs to the belfry and pulled the rope and the rope pulled the bell and the bell swung and the clapper struck the bronze and the bronze rang and the ring went out through the open arches in every direction at the speed of sound. The belfry was a broadcasting tower before radio. The bell was the signal. The signal said it is noon. The signal said somebody died. The signal said come to church. The signal said the fire is coming. One bell. Four messages. The listener knew which message by the pattern. The pattern was the code.

The belfry had bats. The open arches that let the sound out let the bats in. The bats hung upside down from the beams between the bells and the bells rang and the bats scattered and the bats came back. The bats did not care about the noise. The bats cared about the height and the darkness and the shelter. Bats in the belfry. The phrase means crazy. The phrase is wrong. The bats were not crazy. The bats found the best real estate in the tower and moved in. The bats were practical. The people who called them crazy were the ones who climbed a hundred stairs to pull a rope.

The bronze was an alloy. Copper and tin. The ratio determined the tone. More tin made a brighter sound. More copper made a darker sound. The bell founder tuned the bell by shaving metal from the inside with a lathe. Shave the wrong spot and the bell rang flat. Shave the right spot and the bell rang true. The bell founder was a musician who played a lathe instead of a guitar. The instrument was cast in fire and tuned with a blade and played with a rope. I played guitar on the street. The bell founder played bronze in the sky. Same job. Different altitude.

Electronic carillons replaced the bells. A speaker in the tower plays a recording of a bell and the recording comes out of the same arches where the bronze used to ring. The recording sounds like a bell the way a photograph of a person looks like a person. Close enough to fool you from a distance. Not close enough to fool you up close. Stand under the tower and the recording has no overtones. The bronze bell had overtones that lasted eleven seconds. The recording has the fundamental and nothing else. The soul of the bell was in the overtones. The speaker plays the body. The bronze played the soul.

See also: Spire, Stanchion