The noise around us

and the long for quiet

I do not know if it is the age or the uphill, but I long so much for quiet. I am noticing more noise these days. I sleep lighter than I ever have. I am pulled from a dream by a bang a few doors down, or the snoring of the old pipes. I am affected by the sounds around me. They determine my focus and abilities, and even have the power to make me entirely incapable. Most interestingly, we all have our own perspective on sound. Perspective is what keeps the world interesting. It’s why art is so vast and why there are so many genres inside genres. It’s why we have to add separation to everything. The way we see the world is ours and ours alone. We share parts, but the whole picture belongs to us. What we classify as a hell, is a heaven to somebody. One person’s silence is another person’s screaming. I have met those who find calm in electronic music and even death metal, but these are too chaotic for my brain.

These days, my friendships are determined by sound because people are noises, too. Some are silent, some hum like fridges and others are cacophony I cannot interpret. As human beings, we have a false belief that we have to get along with everybody. The fact is that we need to approach people with respect and kindness, but it’s okay if the distance between your songs is too far. People try too hard to squeeze their melodies into music that was never designed to hold them. You do not have to withstand any sound that is too loud for you. Some find the gentleness jarring and require a little more upbeat. The only thing we truly share is our longing for silence, but silence is never silent. It is a catered noise. We are songs, and with the assistance of everybody we love, we make an album.

Every song on your soundtrack should make you feel happy. It shouldn’t feel off-key or out of sync; instead, it should make you want to dance. How you define dancing is a personal choice, too. Not all movement is fanfare. For instance, both listening and laughter are dances. Being patient and letting your friends spill their records is an intimacy like no other, and intimacy is a dance. Whatever sounds make your body feel most at home, chase them. Learn how your friends sing with their bodies and listen to the intricacies of their instruments. You learn that people have sounds within their silences that tell you how they feel. There are plenty who are trying to fight against their natural rhythm, like adding an electric guitar to classical music. Our sounds change, too. Sometimes minutely and other times in major ways. We can drift away from people based on their newest discovery of sound. We are all evolving in slow motion, and evolution is wildly unpredictable. I have lost friends based on our sonic evolution. Some were lost because I got tired of pretending I was the genre I was never meant to be.

Trauma is a sound that healing alters. We find connection in where we ache, and when that aching stops, we learn that we are two songs too far apart. Getting better has a consequence, like everything else. When we move forward, it is sadly inevitable that we will leave something behind. My healing and my settling into the soil of this earth, has led me to a gentle sound. I don’t find many who etch the same grooves into these days anymore. For a long while, I mistook this for loneliness instead of being grateful for the friends who always fit on my records. I know it is scary to sing the song your heart belts out in the shower. I know what it is to finally voice the lyrics lodged in your brain out into the great wide open. Freedom is letting yourself sing whatever song you desire. Through all my growth, I am most grateful for all of the quiet I have found. I finally feel like I am singing the songs my heart has been humming all along. Bring this world, all of your songs. I promise somebody is waiting to sing them. Until next time, Woofenberry’s.

Keep kind and stay true.