The Sound of Silence

You could think that the title of this post referred to my seeming indifference to this blog of late, but that is not the case. First, allow me to defend myself by saying that I have spent the last months creating an old school print version of my "Have You Seen the Dog Lately?" zine, just like the lovely days of olde when Megan Tucker, Jenny Makofsky and, if we made him, Steve Lafler and I did our cut-and-paste-a-thons. The difference this time was doing the bulk of the writing, the layout, the assembling (lots of paste-ins) and the prepping-to-mail-it on my own (except when Steve helped, thanks be to holy bejeezus hallowed be his name). I'm still working on the doggie, actually.

But, no, the sound of silence refers to my visit al norte. I'm in cul-de-sac land in Santa Rosa and the silence is deafening. I guess this is what people want? I don't remember this from growing up around here, though we mostly lived in apartments back then. And a few times, I've heard people complain when they happen to hear the barest snippet of noise, of life, leaking from someone's car or backyard or whatnot. My NIA teacher, who plays world music as we spin around the room, got busted by neighbors who called the police over her noise, and she's playing mellow world music from 6pm to 7pm. Do people really not want to hear a little music floating from a dance studio?

Walking around here feels a little like zombieland, but perhaps I'm the only one who finds silence more threatening than noise. It points to a good decision we made to move to Mexico, where a little neighborhood party, processional down the street, live band in the garden, dog barking never resulted in police calls and legal threats.

What I want to know is, once you've won your 24/7 silence by raging at and alienating everybody, what are you doing with it?