Attempts are often made by guests to my home to offer me advice and to persuade me to make improvements to my home which have proven satisfactory elsewhere. Other people-- I've never been inclined to be.
More than once it has been suggested that I need to install panes of thick glass in order to block the various sounds from outside. Each time this tip passes my ear, I smile vaguely, with such subtlety that I am sure my inner response goes unnoticed.
Inside my head are all sorts of responses: That's the kind of guy that swears he can hear mice pissing on cotton behind walls, or, that person needs to get a job as a sonar technician on a submarine. I like sound. I acquire a level of comfort from the peripheral hum that resonates from outside my window and enters my life without any engagement or assistance from me. It enables me to be a part of life without being involved. I suppose having spent most of my life living in New York City my wiring has been arranged in such a way that sound is inevitable, it has become a part of my inner landscape -- city sound.
This self isolation that has been placed upon the world as we sit at home or find ourselves confined with strangers, each of us trying to outrun the inevitable, has caused a type of anxiety in me which I was not prepared for. The lack of sound.
In my former life of only a month ago I could recognize a Sunday easily. It was the day when sound began gradually. I could sense those still in slumber around me, I could smell meals cooking in anticipation of family dinners, I could hear the church bell ringing reminding me of those still in need of prayer, even the dog had less to say as passerby's became infrequent.
It has been a week of Sunday sound now and I presume this silence may persist for months to come. What will alert me when this isolation comes to pass? I imagine there will be sorrow when we are all done and dusted. I imagine vocal chords in disuse will have lost some memory and we will find ourselves slow to get back up to speed. I imagine that some of us will have succumbed in this interim and a sound once known will be forever silent. I wonder if some of us will emerge with a newfound affinity for silence, while others will talk their heads off. I am surprised that I do not hear more music floating through the air, more laughter, more yells from across the street.
The silence in the air smells of fear. It smells of people too frightened to speak, too confused by the word 'airborne', too convinced that they are immune and only humoring government officials who demand we stay inside. How can the whole world stay inside? For how long?
I look at the BBC News and feel angry at all the hysterical news postings. But then I remember that asking politely all too often falls on deaf ears. Some people need a hard slap across the face in order to get with the program. No matter what news story you read it is always connected to the same information: Wash your hands, don't touch your face, cough into your elbow, Stay at home because I can't stop you from breathing. It's airborne; you can't see it coming. I feel the same hysteria and read of the same nastiness I once felt at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic: people purposefully coughing onto strangers they think deserve a dose, people self identifying who is contagious based upon ethnicity or place of origin. And like the AIDS epidemic we have the same cast of characters that spread misinformation: from our leaders to our paranoid neighbours.
I do not sit well with this silence. I am happy to be alone. I could be alone, it seems, forever but this lack of sound is cacophonous in its own manner. I pull out CD's not listened to for ages. I find reasons to get the dog to bark and the cat to meow or purr. I am grateful the birds still sing, I am learning the unique sound of each ceiling fan that hangs down in each of my rooms. I think of recipes so that I can enter my kitchen; I look forward to the songs my pots and pans will make. I enjoy the bass sound emanating from the stereo as it reverberates in my chest keeping beat with my heart. All of this new found sound seems to hang in the silent air seemingly placed there by hand like ornaments placed in the air by me.
I miss the sound of life.
More than once it has been suggested that I need to install panes of thick glass in order to block the various sounds from outside. Each time this tip passes my ear, I smile vaguely, with such subtlety that I am sure my inner response goes unnoticed.
Inside my head are all sorts of responses: That's the kind of guy that swears he can hear mice pissing on cotton behind walls, or, that person needs to get a job as a sonar technician on a submarine. I like sound. I acquire a level of comfort from the peripheral hum that resonates from outside my window and enters my life without any engagement or assistance from me. It enables me to be a part of life without being involved. I suppose having spent most of my life living in New York City my wiring has been arranged in such a way that sound is inevitable, it has become a part of my inner landscape -- city sound.
This self isolation that has been placed upon the world as we sit at home or find ourselves confined with strangers, each of us trying to outrun the inevitable, has caused a type of anxiety in me which I was not prepared for. The lack of sound.
In my former life of only a month ago I could recognize a Sunday easily. It was the day when sound began gradually. I could sense those still in slumber around me, I could smell meals cooking in anticipation of family dinners, I could hear the church bell ringing reminding me of those still in need of prayer, even the dog had less to say as passerby's became infrequent.
It has been a week of Sunday sound now and I presume this silence may persist for months to come. What will alert me when this isolation comes to pass? I imagine there will be sorrow when we are all done and dusted. I imagine vocal chords in disuse will have lost some memory and we will find ourselves slow to get back up to speed. I imagine that some of us will have succumbed in this interim and a sound once known will be forever silent. I wonder if some of us will emerge with a newfound affinity for silence, while others will talk their heads off. I am surprised that I do not hear more music floating through the air, more laughter, more yells from across the street.
The silence in the air smells of fear. It smells of people too frightened to speak, too confused by the word 'airborne', too convinced that they are immune and only humoring government officials who demand we stay inside. How can the whole world stay inside? For how long?
I look at the BBC News and feel angry at all the hysterical news postings. But then I remember that asking politely all too often falls on deaf ears. Some people need a hard slap across the face in order to get with the program. No matter what news story you read it is always connected to the same information: Wash your hands, don't touch your face, cough into your elbow, Stay at home because I can't stop you from breathing. It's airborne; you can't see it coming. I feel the same hysteria and read of the same nastiness I once felt at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic: people purposefully coughing onto strangers they think deserve a dose, people self identifying who is contagious based upon ethnicity or place of origin. And like the AIDS epidemic we have the same cast of characters that spread misinformation: from our leaders to our paranoid neighbours.
I do not sit well with this silence. I am happy to be alone. I could be alone, it seems, forever but this lack of sound is cacophonous in its own manner. I pull out CD's not listened to for ages. I find reasons to get the dog to bark and the cat to meow or purr. I am grateful the birds still sing, I am learning the unique sound of each ceiling fan that hangs down in each of my rooms. I think of recipes so that I can enter my kitchen; I look forward to the songs my pots and pans will make. I enjoy the bass sound emanating from the stereo as it reverberates in my chest keeping beat with my heart. All of this new found sound seems to hang in the silent air seemingly placed there by hand like ornaments placed in the air by me.
I miss the sound of life.
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