Overconfidence

Can you hear electricity?

My sister and I can, but everyone else in my family says we're crazy. It's the faint buzzing noise I hear when I get too close to an overplugged, fire-hazardous outlet. I always hear a little bit of static, or humming, or resonance in the background of everything I do. 

It doesn't help my brain never shuts up. I don't think I've ever had no thoughts, because I'll always have a line or two talking to each other. I'll use a bit of RAM in the background to complete any tasks I don't even need done, or dedicate a couple cores to keeping the never-ending monologue never-ending.

But when I'm alone enough in a field or the woods or something, I can finally notice how silent everything is. The sounds stop and the quiet feels like a presence instead of an absence, like something I can hold or something I could drop. 

One thing I say a lot (and almost always unfoundedly) is: "I could have invented that." Like the wheel, or sliced bread, or democracy. How much work does it take to imagine a group vote?

I suppose it feels obvious to me since I've never lived without these things existing. That's a bit like John Coltrane or Nirvana; I know they're revolutionary on paper, but it's hard to appreciate their music by itself since more modern musicians have just built upon and improved their ideas, and that's what I'm used to.

As a kid I assumed it was obvious cold wasn't a 'thing', just the absence of warm. But I probably got taught that as a toddler, and unconsciously remembered the fact without the source. But for some reason it took a while for me to view sound as the same thing. I remember my dad setting up some music as a kid, and me trying to blast silence through the speakers because I didn't know how it worked.

I think it's because I never hear nothing. I hear the sharp hiss of a kettle and the next door conversation and the boy racers flying down the streets and the sigh of the dog and the goddamn electricity in the walls. 

When I'm in the middle of nowhere, that's the closest I get. I can look up and see stars and hear nothing, because the sounds of the animals are negligible to the absence of noise I usually hear. 

I still think of sound as a presence. Logically I know that's wrong, but it's the only version I can wrap my head around. When all the other channels are suddenly gone, the only explanation is for something else to be drowning them out.

It's easier to understand something you feel than something you think. And I think with a hell of a lot of noise in the background.