Does Tinnitus Ring a Bell?

This ringing, it’s ringing and ringing
And ringing and ringing and ringing
It’s ringing and ringing
And ringing and ringing
This ringing it’s ringing – fucking noisy

I am a child of the city, a boy of the town, an adolescent of the country and perhaps a man of the world. Spun around on it enough to possess a marginal understanding of its process: it appears to twirl on its axis while revolving around a star (Sol) which spins around a huge hole in the middle of the galaxy. And the galaxy hurls through space with billions of like minded spinning things. In space, everything spins.

On Earth, everything rings. Are you gonna get that?

Allow me to explain…

By 8 years old I moved from the city (LBC boyee) to the town (Santa Rosa – Saint Rose, sounds like a wine). From the town my pater acquired land and on that land I had my first exposure to REALLY FUCKING LOUD noises in the form of gun fire. Started off with the fairly mild explosions of the 22 caliber long rifle and grew to shotguns and high powered rifles. Very loud, very ominous, very dangerous.

When you’re a kid, none of the things that torture you in later life exist. Part of being a kid is causing those things which torture you in later life. Like firing really FUCKING LOUD guns without ear protection. Really stupid. But when you’re a kid, if fortune smiles upon you, you can survive really stupid choices. If fortune frowns upon you, you still have the auditory impact, but people who for some reason don’t favor you are the ones firing the guns – and things louder still.

By teenage, I had progressed to handguns and rock and roll. Both REALLY FUCKING LOUD. Little compares to the sensation of standing in front of a stack of stage monitors, massive speakers with woofers you could live in and tweeters to scare the birds from the sky. At that distance you feel the music as much as hear it. And you REALLY hear it.

The delusion of youth creates a certain sense among the privileged of invincibility. I suspect part of that comes from being so spoiled that your perplexing life has so little meaning that your unsuccessful efforts to end it convince you you’ll be around forever. Part of that comes, I suppose, from the sense that you’ve already been around longer than you want.

In retrospect, a fairly disgusting perspective, especially with the subsequent understanding of the travails others not so blessed endure to maintain the shittiest of lives. We pay in our age for the arrogance of our youth.

It won’t give up, it wants me dead, God damn this noise inside my head…
“The Becoming” – Nine Inch Nails

So, I’ve got this, thing. It lives in my head, not so much my ears, but they’re what I grab when it gets so loud I think my head will explode. But it’s up inside there, like a walkie-talkie set on squelch, an electronicy, bacon cookingy, grindy kind of sound that seems to increase each day as the outside sounds go farther and farther away. It’s really quite maddening, sometimes excruciating. On occasion I cry like a little bitch.

This sound, this noise, then elicits external noise, offering solutions, tinctures and unguents and magical potions to alleviate it. Try zinc, cut out caffeine, drink, don’t drink, smoke, don’t smoke, hold your head under the sink. Certainly one of my favorites – mask the horrid drone with an external horrid drone. Double the drone, embrace white noise, mask everything in the hell of my head.

I play in these solutions: I cut out, I increase, I mask, I bury. I hide. But there’s no place to hide in your head, no safe shelter from your brain. No relief from the constant refrain, no silence for sonic pain.

At times it seems that one of the possible causes of this self imposed perpetual scream (gunfire) could be its only solution. But if such a place as Hell exists (externally) I already know what my eternity will sound like. So, as so many others, in much worse pain, I abide. I can still hear other stuff. I guess that’s enough.

Will somebody answer that?

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