Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
I have a habit of falling asleep with the TV on and waking up to CNN en Espagnol, confused as hell. I need noise to fall asleep. Not living-in-Heathrow’s-flight-path-level noise, just a gentle hum of somethingness to lull me into snooze mode. So in an effort to stop drifting off to the sweet sounds of Law & Order: SVU and having night terrors about weirdo, doll-collecting criminals lurking in the New York night (don’t ask), I’ve been on a mission to find something to fill the void.
Everyone’s natural response to this dilemma is music. But music for me, at the moment, is a no no. I’m going through a phase where it just annoys me. Not all music irritates me, but for me to go through all my music and create a suitable playlist of music-to-fall-asleep-to that doesn’t annoy me, is the type of thing a crazy cat lady does. And I’m not one of those. Yet.
So, I have ventured into the mysterious world of ambient sounds. I downloaded an iPhone app called, believe it or not, ‘Ambiance’ and spent some time scrolling through the various sounds available to weirdo freaks like myself that can’t just fall asleep like normal people. ‘German Street Market’ was the first one that came up. Hmm, too much hustle and bustle. Might make me want to shop. Nope. Next up was the ‘Spanish Pine Forest’ – ugh, too many chirpy birds. Nope. Following that there’s the ‘Chinook Helicopter’ – it was around this time that I realised some people’s idea of relaxation differs vastly from mine. Then came ‘Commercial Dishwasher’ – are you kidding me? Who came up with this shit?
Then it was just bad sound after bad sound. ‘Babies laughing’ – yeah seems nice, but my theory is that all babies start crying at some point and I don’t need to experience that until I’m a mother myself. I sure as heck won’t be falling asleep to it. Then came ‘Montevideo’ which is a combination of people speaking in foreign tongues and birds chirping. No thanks. Then of course there’s ‘Bald Eagle’ which involves more birds chirping, except it’s kind of an angry bird. Or I could go with the ‘BMW 320D’ which sounds like rapid fire bullets aimed straight for your brain or ‘Challenger Tanks’ which makes you feel like you’re in a war zone. Yeah, that’s bound to bring sweet dreams.
I could have gone with ‘Mountain Wolves’ – why not? I’m sure everyone wants to fall asleep to the howls of a creature that, given the opportunity, would rip your face off.
Then finally, I found my sound. I opted for ‘Walk Through a Rainy French Forest’. Rain, footsteps and the occasional chirping bird has been lulling me to sleep for the past week or so like you wouldn’t believe. Oh sure, you may think the footsteps would freak me out, but what you don’t know is that they belong to my imaginary, very hot French boyfriend who is giving me a piggy back through said French Forest to keep my high heels dry. He’s a real giver like that.
Tags: music, noise, random sounds
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