The colors and worlds of sleep slowly fade. Through the slit of my eyelids, the morning half-light seeps in. Silence. There is still a little time left for a sweet doze before waking up. Something thumps on the ceiling. No — there’s no time for dozing. The thought that the neighbors always start thumping the moment my first thoughts invade my consciousness wakes me up completely. I could stay lying there a bit longer, but the stomping of their hooves has already ruined the meditative morning calm before full awakening — a calm that, for me, is often a source of insights and inspiration at the start of the day. But nowadays, insights seem to be harmful. They harm society and their authors. I recall Stalin’s thought: “Ideas are more dangerous than weapons. If we don’t allow people to have weapons, why do we allow them to have ideas?” In any case, instead of inspiration, I begin my day with… good wishes.

Noise in everyday life most often disperses the cloud of proto-thoughts, moods, and sensations before it can crystallize into something more tangible. Noise can be anything — for instance, stomping on the ceiling; the toilet flushing on the floor above, especially if we happen to be in it at the same time; the sound of a drill; a phone call that turns out to be spam or simply a wrong number; or even the ringing of the neighbors’ phone. There is also children’s shouting, the spinning of a washing machine, an undefined humming sound, and so on. Noise can even be the woman shaking her bedsheets on the balcony of the building across the way.

Noise reveals itself most clearly when we begin to perceive some kind of system or synchronization in these phenomena — and a synchronization with what we ourselves are doing. A certain connection between us and ordinary things that sets our inner (neurotic) rhythm. Perhaps.

Because noise is heard only if we have an ear for it — if we perceive it as noise, rather than as information or music, for example. Or as silence — that is, if we choose to ignore it. Which means that noise can also be inside us.

In the lower left corner of my monitor, a cold weather warning has been popping up continuously since yesterday. Cold weather warning. All right. I’ve been warned.