Noise

A couple writing friends and I have assigned ourselves writing exercises based on the The Sun Magazine‘s Readers Write topics. There is one due each month covering a wide array, but the submissions must be ones where you are the only authority–in other words, your personal experience. If you would like to participate, go to The Sun Magazine’s site here and view the topic due the first of the next month. That is our deadline, too. We share our results with each other for fun, not critique, unless you ask for some and the others have time. You don’t even need to share, it’s very relaxed. Just write. It’s amazing what comes out.

April 1 topic was Noise. I’ve been on the road and totally missed the deadline. Here it is late but done, albeit a bit scattered over the map, or should I say soundscape of moments in a life. Hearing starts before we are even born. We hear the sound of our mother and loud noises or music around her. Her heartbeat is probably our first sense of rhythm. Even the deaf can feel the vibration of sound waves. We use noise as a component to keep ourselves safe, becoming alert when something is awry. Noise follows all of us around all our life. Here are some noisy snippets from my life.

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When I was a newborn my Mom was unable to surreptitiously check on me because my eyes would pop open and later my head would lift up in an inquisitive “what?”

Growing up in a quiet Dallas neighborhood, there was nothing finer on balmy summer nights than climbing the tree and scrambling onto the still warm roof to lay looking at the stars and listen to the cicadas susurration. Or hearing a wild mid-western storm crash and bang and flash, the wind whipping the trees around, hail sometimes pounding down on the roof.

In college I dated a guy who apparently had thin walls in his share house because I found out much later that his room mate could hear my lusty cries when my boyfriend and I made love. That’s also the era my hearing took a beating from the many bands I saw. Monster speakers were in close proximity to the stage and one had to be as close as possible, right? Of course.

Pythagorus of Samos, Greece.

Pythagorus believed that music was akin to maths and the two were the underlying key to the Universe. We are therefore tuned in to music on a very basic level. He told a story of a young man he observed bent on revenge. A nearby shepherd was playing a martial air on his flute. Pythagorus told the shepherd to play a lullaby. Suddenly the angry man lost his desire to harm and abandoned his revenge, his savage breast soothed.

As an adult I marveled at the silent muting of snow, a rarity for a southern gal. The whisper of wind in the pines as I was camping was a joy as well. I’d find desolate spots by a river, usually in a National Forest, shunning designated campsites as unsafe for a solo woman. The isolation was somewhat eerie. In the quiet of the evening, sitting in front of a gently crackling fire, even a tiny bird or mouse can sound like a bear crashing throughout he underbrush. A fearful flashlight search discovered two tiny eyes at ground level. Was it laughing at me? Probably. I was. I’d pop an Ella Fitzgerald tape into my boom box and let her soothing voice relax me.

These days I generate my own noise. I have weak lungs and use one of those CPAP machines that most people only use at night for sleep apnea, but I use mine all the time. The air it helps blow into my lungs when I breathe in sometimes works at cross purposes when I’m eating or drinking. I snort and wheeze and gasp although I’m perfectly alright. Sometimes a high squeal escapes the nose piece mask when I naturally don’t breath so I can swallow. These circus noises are a bit disconcerting when in a quiet house, so when I’m with people who don’t know me or haven’t seen me in my current condition I like going out to restaurants. I welcome the din there to cover mine up. Why do I care about that instead of the absolute mess I make and therefore have to wear a bib? LOL. It’s strange where we draw the line. As I get older though vanity fades and practical comfort breathes a sigh of relief.

At home, my bedroom is constantly awash with the steady motor noise and whoosh of my oxygen concentrator and the soft rise and fall of the CPAP. People liken it to the sound of waves on a shingle beach. When I have to share a room on trips, they are lulled by the white noise so like the surf. Since we come originally from the sea and more recently the fluid of the womb and yet need to breath, I feel that these oceanic noises are somehow appropriate for respirators. If the electricity goes out my CPAP still works on battery but the concentrator falls silent. It’s almost too quiet then. I feel like a New Yorker trying to sleep in the countryside. Noise has come to mean comfort to me, to help me breathe, to keep me alive.

I’m a bit deaf now because the CPAP creates this roaring in my ears a lot. I find myself yelling to reach that subconscious threshold of volume we think we need to be heard. You can’t tell a loud person to quiet down and expect them to stay that way because once they get distracted they revert back to that threshold. I also have to have the TV volume higher. It’s becoming more and more necessary to just put the subtitles on. But my favorite button on the TV remote control is still MUTE. I relish that silence. Those loud-mouthed ads drive me crazy! They are truly noisy.

When does sound become noise? Is the difference in the ear of the listener? With age, does sound become noise if we get more cranky? I’ll keep you posted, because noise is determined to follow me around.