Oh, Melancholia! Everyday Pleasantries and Meaningful Friendships Reduced to Nothing With My Noise Canceling Headphones

I’d kill to hear the world around me, but I’m not willing to sin, so I stay one button away from interacting with those encircling me. As I walk around campus each day, I may as well exist in a one-dimensional plane. No width, nor depth, just the sweet voice of Thom Yorke cooing in my over-ear noise canceling headphones. 

Man does not live on bread alone. Rather, man lives in a pressurized soundscape where nothing comes in and nothing comes out. Silence + Noise. This could work.

Try calling after me. I dare you. Unless you text me and Siri whispers it softly over muffled music, I will be oblivious to your existence. I wish I was sorry, I really do. 

Often, I’ll put on a podcast to remember what talking sounds like. It’s nice, these voices. I wish they were singing. 

Sure, it’s strange to never hear another human’s voice unless it is recorded, mixed, and applied to spatial audio, but it’s my life and I want to live it the way I want to live it in the way I choose, with regards to living it. 

On planes, I won’t even notice we’ve moved. Suddenly, I’ll look away from Anyone But You playing on my phone, and I’ll be in an entirely different location, having flown over the largest ocean in the world. My ears pop, having experienced the pressurized cabin of the plane, as well as the pressure accumulated in the headphones, themselves. It hardly matters. 

It’s a full moon tonight. Nobody would be able to tell me that, I can’t hear you. I will find out by looking up at the night sky, as the everyday wax and wane of my surroundings is reduced to nothing. 

If a tree falls in the woods, but I am wearing noise-canceling headphones, does it make a sound?