15

We’ve all heard too much. It flows over. In every radio broadcast it weeps out like puss. It drives at you in dancing waves, across the ocean. These sounds never go away. They are the sweeping rage of a thousand voices. You’ll be knocked off your feet. Knocked out. You can unplug the telly, but hours of recorded footage are projected on the sides of the neighbourhood’s houses.

We hear it from breakfast, during tea break and lunch and on through dinner. At night we slump in as it stops our mouths. We breathe automatically of course.

This cackle and hiss accompany our every waking moment. Its glitches follow us up and down the high street. Print outs are offered on every street corner. In fact, you could have it all on paper if you so wanted. Problem is, it would take so long to print out that you’d wait the clock round as it spewed unendingly from the printer. You’d die trying to keep up with the queue of new information.

On a hard drive full of downloaded talk radio, I have the world’s knowledge. It seeps in slowly and sits confused, coiled up in my brain. On sagging shelves more words than I could take in in shifts daylong, over weeks without end await my eyes. I have no time for them. There are a thousand films I know of, all of them ‘worth-watching‘. There are hundreds more I’d like to see.

Cut me off and let me live in a silent world.