Calm amid noice
Digital noise: phone chatter, loud music cross-talk, the incessant tip-tapping of keyboards, the beeps, bongs and rings of text messages and horrible mobiles ring tones that expose you to things like Wagner played on what sounds like a xylophone – I’m stuck on a bus in the middle of nowhere. It’s hell.
Coping with noisy, busy places for many bipolars is often stressful. It is absolutely true for me. Modern digital when confined on planes, trains and buses produces in me significant agitation that scales up to bold anger the longer I’m exposed to it. But journeys to work have to be made. So today I queue on a rainy street and wait for a bus to take me home.
On this day, the bus arrives and I get on seeking out the quiet spot. I take a seat at the back of the bus. All looks quiet there. But then a youthful metallic voice shoots out from a mobile phone clutched by someone who clearly is not blessed with an gifted cranium. She responds to this disembodied voice so loudly you could just about make out the discussion. Years before in a very manic moment I joined in a conversation like this one agreeing with the voice at the end of the phone. A rather robust altercation ensued – Lamictol vicar please?
But despite being older and medicated it’s still hard to ignore fellow passengers who choose to share their personal conundrums and gossip at volume. For me it starts turning that bipolar screw in my head. I dream of seats that are sensitive to inconsiderate loudness. These passengers who choose to show little respect for others activate a mechanism in their seat that forcefully ejects them and their mobile through the roof of the bus. There conversation would conclude with the mobile owner hanging from parachute strings in a wood nearby. I did approach the bus company with the idea, but apparently it’s illegal.
But I digress.
The screw tightens again. Somewhere close by there is a personal headset with the volume turned up. There is that incessant, repetitive ‘shi-shi-shi’ sound which drills deep bores of sonic irritation deep into the brain. Yet despite its never-ending repeating rhythm the tune cannot be heard. For all know this particular young gentlemen may have the Sesame Street theme tune on a loop.
No! now we have youth. Britain’s finest, a group of teenagers are getting on the bus. They are loud, boisterous, Although harmless they conduct themselves with little understanding of boundaries. They have brought their world on to the bus and we the other passengers are now forced to share it – but without an invite to reply. Phone calls are made to arrange for this and that and still the woman nearby continues her conversation while Sesame Street man remains locked in loud whatever.
This cacophony of uninvited noise is turning the screw in my head still further. I feel the anger grow. that worsens as mobile lady begins another call with someone else which sounds exactly like the first. Thirty minutes ago I was in good order. Now I listen to a symphony of digital noise: hellish discord. It’s all too much and bring on an impulse to engage all those who choose to impose their digital beeps, bongs and inane chatter to a stop. But these day, like most people I just tear my head apart listening to it.
But for sanity’s sake next time I shall I will bring my own digital gear – listening to the radio or music – anything. Just get headphones on and zone out.
Other people’ digital discourse and accompanying bongs, dings and Wagner played using spoons will no longer bother me.
I know all this isn’t’ a uniquely bipolar reaction. Everyone these days it seems are getting headphones to connect and zone out. It’s understandable. Short of having significant patience or being wholly insensitive to noise how can you deal with a multitude of mobile calls and headphones leaking repetitive, irritating noiise without wanting to shut yourself away from it all?
But it’s sad. Because of this growth of digital we are gradually becoming divorced from those around us. An irony in all this is now a plethora of digital devices allowing us to communicate in an every increasing number of ways, but it just seems to isolate us more. Being in the digital zone gradually reducing the degree of real interplay between ourselves and the world around us. For those in their digital zone their immediate surrounds are of no interest; people nearby merely shadows, silhouettes that rarely intrude on them watching video footage of goldfish performing the Can-can or gossiping with someone about someone with a likeness for ginger biscuits. It’s all so existential and shallow. What things we can invent, what poor use we put them too.
I write all this from a position of being current quite stability. I have in the past picked up my mobile pretended to dial a number and then shout “Is that the Digital Noise Volume adjustment service?” I’ve asked people to shut up, got into arguments with people playing music to loud, but ultimately to no avail. The war is lost and the digital world will serve up a thousand other ways to distract us from anything meaningful and continue trivialising our transactions with the world. I join the buzz if only to put on the headphones and remove the noises of those locked into their digital world. Hypocritical? Yes, but the alternative is four or five very wholly hats which will more draw attention to me that I’d feel comfortable with.
fifty minutes later, I get off the bus. I’m fortunate enough to live in a quiet English village and it is the antidote I need. I begin my walk home and pass some people and both parties say ‘hello’ to the other. Such a simple courtesy, but set against an hour’s worth of thoughtless, disruptive noise it is a very wonderful thing indeed.