Ringing Research

My head was ringing all day, and on the way home I listened just to the noises of the car, the highway, the endless passing vehicles. I got passed by a pig yesterday. Sitting on 100 he accelerated past me and gave me the filthy look from hell. What?! Was my petticoat showing? Had I offended his pale pink sensibilities with my dirty back window? I don't know. But it did give Carte Blanche to all other vehicles on the road and I watched them move off into the distance in their illegal 115klm/hr caravan of speed. I just wanted some time alone.

Ringing in the head is unnerving. Sometimes it's in the ears - that's also not great. In the head is crazy land though. Is that just a kind of headache?
Oh - I just asked Wiki - and it reckons I have Tinnitus. Which it appears is largely subjective. In a few cases, it is objective and the person's ears actually emit sound. Full On! As it doesn't interfere with me falling asleep, it isn't severe. It's just that in Battle Star Galactica, they include the ship's hum as part of the soundtrack - and Firefly (tho not as much) and it's a big part of being immersed in those worlds - escaping into DVDs at night - is the soundscape.

That's hard to grasp - how integral sound is. There's no natural environment without it - except space. Sound can't travel in a vacuum. As a writer, it's something that gets largely left up to the reader - trying to do more than hint at the soundscape can really distract more than add to the mood. Sound is so much a part of everything to us, that it has effectively become invisible until it's not there. That's why those old BBC productions of novels are so hard to bear - too quiet. Only the dialogue. Creepy.

Sound. I crave quiet and my own head brings with it these noises - ringing, clicking and cracking, ticking, blood. So if you see me laying on the bed in the dark - I'm not being lazy (necessarily) I'm researching sound. Same goes for watching BSG or Firefly. That's my excuse for this week, and I'm sticking to it.