The Sound of Fear

And in the naked light I saw, ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking, people hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared, and no one dared
To stir the sound of silence.

            Simon and Garfunkel, “The Sound of Silence”

    
     Everybody knows what it feels like to be moved by a song. We have all experienced that moment where we roll down our car windows, jump up on bar counters, strut down the street, singing our favorite tune. We all know what it feels like to get lost in our thoughts when the radio plays a tune that reminds us of a lost loved one, a sad story, or a better time. Your mother’s voice when you are sick and lonely, your lover’s laugh when you said something silly, your dog’s bark when you walk through the door. All of us are swayed by melody, dancing through whatever emotion the noise evokes; and yet, we are unaware of our steps. Our lives are choreographed to an orchestra of inconspicuous clangs and beeps and zooms that are destined to remain just background music for us to waltz to. The noises of life keep it flowing, shifting, drifting, in calm. 

     In the wake of the increasing violence in the Middle East, I find myself acutely aware of the very things that are supposed to remain quietly loud. The shriek of an ambulance, the cry of a fornicating cat, the wail of an air raid siren all resonate differently with me now, evoking an urgent need for the ability to discriminate between melodies, a burning desire to understand music. When it all began, every note sounded the same, with that deep, threatening bellow that ascends into a warning squeal only to fade off into an ominous hum, promising the inevitable boom. The slightest change in the white noise that is supposed to unnoticeably accompany every moment was enough to make my insides drop and my heart flutter. The capacity to differentiate between the various rackets of city life has become crucial to my sanity…it’s not a warning siren, it’s a revving engine…it’s a warning siren, not the signal for the beginning of Shabbat. Good noise versus bad noise. How does one ever learn how to tell the difference? 

     I have been doing everything faster in trying not to miss a sound. I get dressed quicker, shower faster, think sooner so that I am not blindsided, caught off guard by a howling siren urging me into the closest windowless staircase. The cacophony of the rockets seem to shatter not only buildings, skies, and families, but the cadence of everyday life. Everything feels choppy and uncoordinated, like perpetual fight or flight. We are all on edge, singing out of tune. 

     The slightest tickle of my now heightened sense of sound sets in motion a cascade of synaptic, nervous activation of my other four senses. I hear something and I immediately scan my surroundings; I look right and left for the nearest shelter, up and down for the glimpse of a rocket getting intercepted by the Iron Dome. I cannot walk down the street or drive in a car without assessing available refuge at every new distance traveled. And yet, just as soon as I have completed the reconnaissance, I begin to feel my own heart beat. To viscerally understand the sensation of being aware of one’s own heartbeat, I now know, is to fully comprehend what is feels like to feel. So involuntary, so frightening, so real. I feel my atria contracting against my ventricles, sending the blood from my aorta to the rest of my body—my limbs tingle, my head pounds, and my skin sweats, waiting for the sound to last just a few seconds longer than what seems comfortable, for the cry to grow into a howl. As the blood pumps through my veins, I imagine that I can smell the smoke of the exploding rocket, the unwashed uniform of the scared soldier protecting the border, and the dank air of the bomb shelter in my basement that was just reopened for the first time in twenty years. Finally, I taste my own fear, that bitter wave of anxiety that comes crashing down my tongue. It tastes like a thousand ghost stories, a million close calls. I let my senses process, tormented by sound. 

     It has been six days now. Six days of hyperresponsiveness, of insecurity, of prayers directed at the same God to whom my attackers pray. I worry that my new perception of sound will take the place of the bustling, yet soothing noises that once bathed my ears and become my new reality in the way that it has for those people living in the southern part of the country. In the south, sirens have become as familiar as car horns, exploding missiles as natural as barking dogs, code red warnings as ordinary as upstairs neighbors moving furniture. After having experienced just six days of that kind of terror, my heart breaks at the thought of their tortured psyches. 

     For now, I can only wish for it to end, will life to go back to normal, and beg for those on both sides of this conflict to let me go back to my quiet noise. No matter your political opinion, forcing someone to go through life waiting for next threat of attack is simply inhumane. I pray for the moment when some form of peace is reached so that I can free my senses and finally exhale. 

     I cannot live a life where I long for silence, and all I hear is fear.