Oh the noise, noise, noise, NOISE!

[flemmings]

'Your brother hates music,' says my s-i-l. No surprise. I hate music too, when it plays in the background, because when music plays I have to listen to it. This puts me at odds with, at a conservative guess, 90% of the population because they seemingly can't abide silence. Not sure why. Are they afraid of their own thoughts? like those people in the experiment who gave themselves shocks rather than sit for fifteen minutes without stimulation. Whatever, it was always a problem for me at work, because it's hard to hear the nap room monitor-- or indeed another staff imparting information-- when Lady Gaga is blasting from the player. Of course, it could just be my hearing going, because I've been losing the higher pitches for at least a decade now, and lower pitches when there's ambient noise. And music is ambient noise for me.

But then there's that scientific conclusion that your musical preferences are set in your teens and twenties, and that maybe I wouldn't mind music at work if it was the Beatles or the Mamas and Papas. What made me think that was coming home the other day and crossing paths with a guy on a bicycle whose boombox was blaring behind him. But the box was booming Dock of the Bay and it didn't bother me at all.

The air show however, with its sonic booms, is noise, pure and simple, and physically painful. It's supposed to rain tomorrow and Monday and I sincerely hope it does, with low cloud cover obliterating the CN Tower. One day of it was quite enough, thank you.

Comments

[mbwun.livejournal.com]

I think you have it there with people not being able to sit with their thoughts. We took a vacation couple weeks ago and it was just us and the woods. Cell phones don't work out there. It is marvelous.

I sit and watch the critters. The wind ruffles the leaves and the birds sing. Wonderful week of "nothing". I return to work filled with loud and music and they think I'm nots for cutting away.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

But out in the woods there are a million things to watch. It's all changing. Back in day to day, it's same old same old familiar and I guess one looks for distraction from the not always congenial ie work. Maybe loud music drowns out the constant underlying sense of 'I don't want to be here'.

I do know that, happy introvert though I am, I tend to reach for my phone or tablet rather too often. But (I tell myself) that's because I don't get to see anyone regularly nowadays, not because I need distraction. And hope it's true.