I almost dove into my day. I got up at 7 and took the long hot shower and I came downstairs and I fed that cat and fed this rob. I pressed the cold coffee and I read the news and ate breakfast. And then I stood up and went to go down the stairs to dive into much needed random works for the local folk scene…
And then I stopped. The world is in the midst of one of those rare silences that I like to celebrate with the clicking of my keyboard. Birds are tweeting but cars are silent. The constant hum of the ceiling fan, the creak of the house.
I’m realizing I should take a moment to savour this before diving in.
I fill my head with noise from the moment I wake up to the moment I close my eyes and pretend to try to sleep. I like consuming. For as much as I long to be a producer – of art of content of GOOD – I struggle not to simply be a consumer – of art of content of STUFF – and so taking a moment to reset and balance between the two, to simply BE… I don’t do enough of that.
The refrigerator kicks on and though I know it’s providing a vital service, THAT noise sort of ruins the moment. Holding at something like 44dB, contextualized as a “quiet library” which is slightly quieter than a “quiet office”, I know I shouldn’t gripe. But the texture of the sound is different now.
The faders of the world are ridden : wind and branches up a couple of ticks, birds up to match, enter the snore of the cat, movement from upstairs, the creak of the chair and then… just for a moment… back it ALL off to just hear the fridge. Birds return, computer fan kicks up. Cat wakes with a snort, two very moist SLURP sounds and then everything returns to the pseudo-silence of the refrigerator’s tireless redistribution of energy.
What a forgettable noise for a remarkable undertaking. Heh. I sort of feel like that’s the inverse of me most days.
Drop all the faders down to zero except for that cat snore.
End scene.