Aug 6, 2019
The world is so noisy now
I’m in the gleaming upstairs café at Whole Foods, where it smells like burgers & bathroom cleaner. The tables are stained with a high gloss, the floors are liquid silver. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And all around me, noise.
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There’s the echoing cacophony from the store below. The punk music the staff plays as they work the grill. The hum of ceiling fans, the shrieks of small children, the tinny shouts of a speaker-phone conversation that seems like it should be more private.
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Outside—traffic and sirens, the loud bangs of a nearby construction site, dark SUVs with bass that shakes the world.
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Engines and music and television thumping through the wall. Motorcycles and leaf blowers and ice cream trucks and fireworks.
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constant. fucking. noise. another way we’ve polluted our world.
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Noise canceling headphones help. Especially if you play the right kind of music music, the kind that breathes, that becomes your world. Low, bassy beats and rich, liquid treble, and not too many vocals. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Meditating also helps. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I like to sit outside on my porch and open my ears like a hi-fi microphone. Taking in every sound and every layer of sound. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
No labeling (it’s a goldfinch! Matthew’s making tea!), no judging (that souped-up bass probably belongs to someone I wouldn’t like! humanity is fucked!), no thinking (was that a bear? I haven’t seen a bear in awhile. I wonder if I grew herbs outside, if the bears would eat them. why don’t I garden more? man I suck!) ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Sitting there, I imagine my microphone ears reaching out into the world, seeking out the tiniest, subtlest sounds, the ones that get drowned out by the rest of our noisy world, and plucking them from obscurity. *I hear you.* ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
In this way, I am in the world, the noisy world, taking up my space, acting on my environment. And the world is also in me, infiltrating my space, acting on me.
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It doesn’t change the fact that humans have filled the earth with shitty noise, or that it’s never going to stop until we’re too extinct to notice.
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But it’s something.
About Sam
Samantha Pollack is a Copywriter & Creative Director who works with ethically minded, mission driven businesses who are actively trying to reshape our culture (and possibly tear down the patriarchy). She’s also the founder of The Highly Sensitive Business Owner, a 12-week online program that helps HSPs & neurodivergent business owners create healthier, more sustainable systems in their work.
Sam also writes about feminism, privilege, pop culture, entrepreneurship, the creative process, and whatever else is on her mind. She currently lives in Asheville, NC.
Emails for cult thought leaders.
(Personality included.)
Want to learn how to craft emails that inspire action and engagement WITHOUT the “tried and true” (cough: patriarchal) norms we’ve all been taught?
I’m doing it, and I can show you how to do it, too.
(But sometimes, I also like to write about the books I’m reading, or the creative process, or the entrepreneurial experience, or why I hate Steve Jobs, or how I met my BFF. I’ll send you emails like that, too.)
*Just kidding. It’s only an email list.
Books. Cats. Rants. Drawrings.
(and every couple months or so, an unexplained absence 🤷🏻)
