White Noise

Last night, I fell asleep with the white noise machine set to play "Gentle Rain," even though outside there really was gentle rain. The real rain noise was almost indistinguishable from the artificial one, but in the end, I decided the real sound would be too unpredictable, so I turned the volume up on the machine, till the sound of the gentle rain was completely drowned in the sound of gentle rain.

At breakfast, I had to pick between a rough-looking organic apple and a shiny symmetrical one, glistening with wax—and that's when I realized: reality is too real. We can't handle reality; or if we can, we prefer not to. Reality is uneven: it's juicy but it's bruised. What we want, or seem to want more and more, is something other than real—a little more than, and a little less. Something maybe 80% real, to protect us from the unpleasant 20%.

[Reality can be "augmented" as much by what's taken away as what's added.]

A shiny plump apple that looks exactly like we think an apple should, and has no taste whatsoever. The looped sounds of a dry rainstorm, and your feet never get wet. An airbrushed magazine model, never has a grumpy day. Boneless chicken breasts, resemble tofu more than poultry. A fast food hamburger, soy-enriched, salt-soaked, pre-digested, and its relation to an actual hamburger distant and probably illegitimate.

One reason we prefer familiar brands is their consistent uniformity: they take a kind of stress out of decision-making. Starbucks might not make the best coffee, but you know exactly what you'll get—and it'll be better than the liquid dirt that you might get served at the Mom and Pop cafe. Brands help people manage their personal risk (even when that "risk" is no greater than a bad cup of coffee).

And mass production in general has required the removal of unevenness and unpredictability from its results. Now, so many generations deep into industrialism—so long that we've lost the cultural wisdom of other modes of production—we've become averse to anomalies, differences, unpredictability, randomness.

[White noise machines, by design, exist to protect us from anomalous sound.]

We've wrapped ourselves in a kind of idealism: we want "perfect" apples, perfect women, perfect rain. And for that, we sacrifice a kind of romanticism, because by "perfect," we don't mean the best, but only the most unflawed—the least unique. We drown out life with the sound of life.