Tuning In and Tuning Out

2 in one week! You guys are lucky! How often am I caught in these writing booms? Who knows. So let’s ride the wave of creativity together. 

As most of the world knows, Daylight Savings Time began causing us all to collectively groan and “Spring Forward”. Get it together, Ben. We’re no longer in an agricultural society. But I digress. Because of this, most of the world is now up before the Sun. I’m up before the Sun now, at least. Much to my dismay. 

But in the darkness I became very much aware of the fact that I block out a great deal of the world with music. Books. Anything that can keep me away from the realities of the world. 

I didn’t become aware of how much ‘noise’ I was creating really until last night. I keep my mp3 player on nearly the highest setting to drown out the noise of the bus’ mechanics and stepping in to my silent apartment for the first time again in hours made me realize, I could clearly hear each word of my music through the feeble earbuds of my mp3 player. It was 10 settings away from max. I needed a change.

So this morning when I woke up, I decided to forgo the mp3 player. The walk this morning wasn’t necessarily any more peaceful. The pink polluted haze that lingered over the city seemed more at home in a post-apocalyptic dystopian anime than it did in an urban setting likely no more or less urban than your own, fair readers. The whirl of cars and capitalism, people living outside of their means. 

I managed this bus ride without my manufactured noise. Letting the people carry on their conversations, eavesdropping when convenient for me. The sounds of industry. The sights, smells and feeling of a city trying so hard to be something that at times, it just isn’t. 

I accepted the noise of the cosmic universal oneness. I let my Transcendental roots show. And I regret it. The world is much better with a soundtrack. My soundtrack.