The Voice of the Planet

I want the walls of my home to be thicker. Shouldn't a home be a refuge from the outside world and all its unsolicited noise, noise, noise?! A few weeks ago, I was babysitting a little boy named Townes during the day. When it came time for his nap, I closed the blinds, turned off the lights, and yet there was still something so distracting, something so intrusive that I didn't think he would ever get to sleep. Cars from a relatively busy neighborhood street-- ceaseless. Luckily, he has a white-noise machine-- the oddest invention, I never had one as a child, I never needed one I suppose. I find them to be more distracting-- it just adds to the mix of already unnecessary sound until they all seem to blend together as one loud, distorted groan. As if the world is suffering from appendicitis, clutching its side, begging for morphine-- for the synthetic relief of a noise-maker.

My house is sandwiched between Eastwood Road and Mayfaire Town Center (formerly a horse grazing pasture). A highway and an open-air shopping mall. I wake up to cars speeding down my street to drop children off at school with enough time to swing by Starbucks before work. This sound is kind of like when I walk into Time Warner Cable, or some other electronic store, and I am immediately uncomfortable, almost in pain, because of the ever-present, high-pitched chorus of ringing from every television, cable box, speaker, all competing for our attention-- attempting to distract us while their bosses rob us blind.

This is what our lives have been reduced to: waiting impatiently to be entertained, and barely recognizing our own name being called over a loud speaker. Selective listening-- that implies that we have some kind of choice in the matter. Even if being aware of every intricate detail of a soundscape was easy and required little thought, would we choose to listen? I would. I would much rather have to think hard about not listening that to exert an inordinate amount of energy in order to recognize the sound of my own dog's bark. While I think it is a voluntary response to ignore the monotone drone of everyday, man-made sound, I do believe exercising our listening abilities is a process imperative to our development as the animals we are.

If you can hardly detect the small inflections of your lover's voice, the cadences that distinguish them from a sea of other suitors-- allowing their voice to identify their place in time and space, their mood, their own self-- if you struggle to determine the distinct differences between their voice and another's, how can you say you really know them?