I need quiet.

The noise of the city never used to bother me.

I remember a few years back, I started renting out my old apartment, and the couple who moved in was saying how it was a drawback that the apartment was street-facing (as opposed to back alley oriented). I remember thinking, well aren't you a bunch of whingers.

Now, though, I maybe see what they mean. Traveling over the past year really changed my perspective in terms of what I want in a place to be. Safety, of course, is paramount. Yet, to me, safety doesn't translate in fences, or living up in some skyscraper, where no one can touch you. Ironically, the place I felt safest while abroad was a ground floor apartment, where everyone could know everyone's business. A smaller village as opposed to the capitals I'd stayed in previously. I remember it as such a place of peace.

There is no peace in the big city, which brings me back to noise. There is always noise, and I wonder if it's engineered to keep us in a permanent state of alert, or it's simply how things have played out. Either way, I'm not long for this place. For big cities, in general. I can no longer handle the noise. I feel like Tom Cruise in Interview with the Vampire.

There is so much here demanding your attention. Just now, another siren went off. Ambulances, police cars. It doesn't help we live near a fire station, I guess. And cars. I've been doing some grounding practices lately, and one involves acknowledging what you hear around you. It wasn't until I started doing these that I realized how many cars there are. An engine of some sort almost always makes it on my list of things I hear. It's getting to be a bit much.

I feel old writing this. I used to think noise was just something you took in stride. Until I discovered the absence of noise. The possibility to sit on the balcony, reading, without hearing engines revving and horns blaring. That's not exactly absence of noise in its truest form, but I'll take it.

I'm very into music, as you know, and I used to boast of having tremendous capacity to divide my attention. I could listen to stuff (as well as the noise of the city) while working. Introspection has forced me to a realization of sorts,

Even the noises we like and invite are demanding our attention. Our brain processes the noise of a car engine, a police siren, or even a song we love, and it assesses it for threat. And that's because we take information from our senses. We need to hear, in order to know we are safe, and each horn, each siren, each whisper, impinges on that.

So now I listen to less music while I work, and when I do, it's mostly ambiance, or people like this guy:

We can survive the noise. But we tune the world out.

The more demanding our environment, the more we learn to tune it out. It's a survival process, something designed to keep you and me from going mad. The more noise exists in our immediate space, the more disengaged we become.

"You'll learn to tune it out."

It's a cutesy phrase that pops up in movies, but tuning out, I feel, may not be so innocent. Nor helpful. In order to avoid and preserve myself from the constant blare and demand of city noise, I need to create a barrier between myself and my body, which can't help noticing the sounds. From my brain, which must study the noises for signs of danger.

Naturally, the more you disengage, the more jaded you risk becoming. Already, we spend the majority of our time up in a cloud of thought, and not in tune with our bodies. So maybe it's a good idea to avoid stressors that make us want to further disengage.

What engagement looks like to me (engineering the absence of noise)

Engagement, the act of being more present in my own body, is an active effort. It's seeking to make more space. For now, it's nothing. We're off to Sicily later this month, and I want to see how quiet it is there. Then, in August, I'm looking forward to a trip in-country to a place of nature and forest, and great silence. I'm very excited about that, even though, ironically, the end-goal is a music festival. I'm hoping around that, we can build some moments of silence in nature. That's needed.

And as the year progresses, I feel myself called away, to quieter places. To places where I can just be. I heard Russell Brand say recently that he tries to stay aware.

That his day isn't a sequence of tasks to be carried out, but an invitation to gratitude for being alive, and to stillness.

I imagine he's quite a busy man, so I liked that view a lot. I'm trying to bring it into my own existence.

What about you? Do you enjoy the hum of the city, or do you crave the quiet?

Edit: Synchronicity. Feeling my need for more gorgeous ambiance, I found this in my YouTube feed just now.