-Can You Give Me Something to Sing About?

No matter where you reside, you are most likely surrounded by noise, it doesn’t have to actually come from humans, but there is a good chance that you are surrounded by noise. The hum of the fluorescent lights above you, the panting of your dog sitting at your feet, the people walking by your door, the cars speeding past on the street outside, the stupid bird that won’t shut up, the clicking noise that comes from your refrigerator, the yelling of vulgarities from the people two doors down and of course the amazing techno beats being pumped into your ears by your ipod. From the moment we wake we are surrounded by noise, the sounds of everyday life and all that goes on inside of it; but we are also under the constant spell of hearing “the noise”. “The Noise” (which I will no longer put quote marks around because I expect you to keep up and which is not to be confused with the next teen horror movie stolen from Japan)is the sounds that are continuously jamming on and on inside of our heads. The pesky, throbbing, pounding that is always in your head; going on even when you try to sleep, even when you try to focus on work, even when you try to submerge it in some sick beat from Miss Minogue or le Justin. The sounds that wind through your brain screaming like a kid on a roller coaster, but the ride never stops. Sometimes the sounds are so loud and overpowering that it seems like everyone around you is speaking in a foreign language and all you hear is the radio station inside your brain. Is it to anyone’s surprise that sometimes the only thing we can do to deal with it all is break out in dance and possible song? It usually ends up being more of a raging scream rather then a melodic sing-a-long because it would be impossible to stay in tune with a zillion songs at once. And that’s what it sound like; a zillion things at once.
I realize that I haven’t really spent much time on what the noise actually consists of, or what is being sung inside each of our heads, and frankly that’s because I don’t want to. We all know what I’m talking about, the two zillion things that we are constantly worrying about, focusing on, thinking over, planning out, imagining if, holding onto, and sorting through. The brain should be organized like a juke box, everything sorted into nice little categories with cute little white labels. That way nothing is ever out of place or inappropriately played, no random Timbaland when you really need some Red Umbrella. It would be great if our brains could be sorted like that, then we would just be able to decide what we think about and when. Ok for the next forty minutes I’m going to read this textbook, some Time To Study would go nicely so I’ll just press C23. Maybe later I’ll try to sift my way through my battlefield of a love life; some Try To Think It Through would fit the mood, E12. Sadly our brains are not nifty little machines like jukeboxes. The metaphor that describes the noise better is something like this, take fifty different Bose radios turned on full blast and send them down a garbage disposal. Or imagine an ipod shuffle personified and on forty hits of acid. Too much noise to actually hear anything. That last sentence makes sense, just think it over.
What does clear the noise a little, or make the volumes dial down, is a cup of mindblowingly good coffee. Being engulfed in a hug from someone you adore. Doing favorite tv show marathons with someone you love. Cooking in the kitchen with songs from the seventies blasting in the background. And, of course, lots and lots of clothes, good friends, and remixes. Jacques lu Cont. Paul Van Dyk. Paul Oakenfold. Benassi.