The Bradbury Hypothesis

The Bradbury Hypothesis

To begin with you should know that I reserve the right to change this story, revise, rewrite, reform, just as I reserve the right to change my life and who I am as a person.

 It happened today, but it started some time ago, it has been building at an irregular rate, sometimes not at all then abruptly running high speed towards the precipice, until, today it fell off the edge. I was driving home from school and the radio DJ was spewing forth about the BCS game and how it has once and for all proven blah blah blah, so I switched the station. Here I found something new and innovative, a country singer telling me about how great it was growing up in his hometown. Apparently he lived in the only town in the world where teenagers liked to drink beer, drive too fast, and attempt in vain to lose their virginity while in high school. I got so disgusted I turned the radio and drove home accompanied only by my thoughts until I began wordless humming The sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel.  

This has been coming for some time it really has, my complete and utter contempt with the amount of noise we fill the world with. Listen to me very carefully and observe just one incident in my life. I am on nursing school and not a private we will admit anyone who can get financing school, but a state college the kind of place where you have to bust your hump and compete for admittance, the kind of place where you should find some of the brightest people hoping to learn this challenging career. Any time the professor stops to take a deep breath, 10 conversations start amongst people throughout the room. I really want to put on my boots and my Senior Chief face and stomp in amongst them swearing and kicking until they comply.

Yesterday it occurred to me that these people are the product of the video age. Television was their babysitter,  Facebook is their confessor, they don’t know what it is like to not be enveloped in a cloud of noise. I think perhaps the idea of being alone is the scariest demon they might ever face and they won’t ever be alone if they can help it. It brought to mind a Ray Bradbury story called Almost the end of the world. I was going to tell you about it, but decided I would do you the bigger favor of letting you read and enjoy it for yourself.

My point is this. I don’t want to be in this noise anymore. I don’t want to watch tv.  I don’t want to IM. I don’t want to read. I don’t want to be entertained. I want to try and listen to myself and find out if it drives me to insanity. I am alone now.