Do you listen to the WTF with Marc Maron podcast? No? It’s my happy place. Incidentally, do you know who Nick Tosches is? I didn’t either—until Wednesday morning when I was driving to work, convinced I wasn’t going to last another three days under the skull-crushing pressure I’ve put myself under as of late. I listened intently, searching for the darkness Marc had teased in his intro. It wasn’t immediately apparent.
The day before, I’d sat in a stupor—after working until 11pm the night before—looking into (and in some way, past) swarms of people, all clustering like flies on a cabbage patch of computer monitors and ergonomic seats. My new building.
Like oxygen pumping out over a casino, industrial-level white noise roared, effectively hypnotizing my brain into a sedated uncertainty, not unlike that Vegas trickery that causes you to stumble outside unsure of whether it’s going to be day or night. White noise somehow feels more dangerous, though—removing your motivation to be irritated, happy, focused, distracted, or desperate. You don’t know if it’s loud or quiet.
The day after would be a snow day. A glorious, brain-clearing snow day.
But Wednesday—Wednesday was going to be a marathon. A series of sprints around schedules and timelines, and timelines for timelines, and looking at timelines, talking about them, revising them, pondering them, approving them, salting them, then eating them.
Until I heard this podcast.
Hence the increased edge to the desperation. There is nothing—nobody’s arms to fall back into. If you do, you’re gonna crack your skull on the street. It’s a gas! Allowing yourself the time, freedom, silence and solitude to truly experience how desperate you are, rather than turn it sideways, or shut it off, with television, or a cell phone, or an app—that can really be a calmative. And when you look around with those fresh eyes, you really see. You thought you were desperate? Look at the desperation around you. Every one of these smiles, and giggles, and laughs, and chatters… it’s all total desperation.
Author Nick Tosches’ take on life in the modern age. The lack of solitude that offers you a chance to be honest with yourself. But now I need his take on the modern office. Because it was like he was subliminally warning me to the white noise—that thudding, washing-machinesque volume I was aware of but also deaf to—and that on the surface, it had a purpose, but like any effective pharmaceutical, also has symptoms.
I’m new to conspiracy theorems, but not to paranoia. The flies—I’m not convinced they’re desperate. Not yet.
This post brought to you by Bose noise-canceling headphones.
-C.
[Deets for the cheap seats: Madewell cropped t-shirt, the best shirt I’ve bought in years + Isabel Marant booties and skirt + All Saints jacket + Vanessa Mooney collar.]
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