Dime In My Dryer
These past 22 months have been fascinating; tragic, monotonous, at times horrifying and at others crazy making, but fascinating in the sense that so much was revealed. Like a gauze being peeled away from my eyes after some exotic ocular augmentation, a forced reassessment of…well, everything. New eyes beget new sights.
One part of the experience we find ourselves still proportionally mired in today is the unending chatter, or shall we say “noise," which has become an inseparable part of our shared understanding of what is now considered normal. This noise and variations on it have existed perpetually in various forms; be it media, politics, family and relationships (among other things) — or literal noise like the kind you encounter living in the city amid the honking, the arguing over parking spaces, the construction, the sirens, etc., etc. Now toss in the heroic dose of anxiety, blame, fear and outrage that came cascading in through our sputtering sense-making apparatuses and voila! you have the average, noisy, confused and chattering modern mind! This novel virus that stormed into our lives 22 months ago was merely the icing on top of an already teetering and top-heavy wedding cake. The guests were only here for the food and drinks, the caterer quit and now everyone is drunk, starving and jonesing for vanilla sponge, and they’re happy to use their hands as utensils. Congratulations to the happy (?) couple and welcome to the year 2022!
My pandemic started as many of yours did, stuck in one place and making the best of things, adapting where I could and learning how to be still for more than a week at a time. Stasis ended up being the most powerfully telling part of the experience; it was in the relative silence of a world mostly shut down that I noticed how loud things had been in the before times. Not the obvious part of my life that is governed by big sounds and traveling, no, but that chatter or noise that emits from our shared experience as people. All of a sudden it would stop for brief intervals, and in those gaps is where I began to see the parts of my life and my general experience that offered more signal and less noise. The proverbial dime in my dryer, as it were. There it was, spinning around, topsy-turvy, a jumbled load of yesterday’s linens, but somewhere in there lurked a tiny metal sphere, clanking and pinging in occasional rhythms, even catching the light periodically and shimmering in the spin cycle, singing out to anyone sitting still enough to hear its song. Then, six months into the pandemic we broke up and she left.
She was one of the few things inside of this strange experience that brought some modicum of clarity and hope, some signal, if you will, into the noisiness of this era. We started out well enough during lockdown; we cooked and ate together, we got to know each other better than we could have otherwise, we leaned into one another as the world tilted more and more off axis, and as a pair we were able to keep our hopes up and remain with a relative (though cautious) optimism about how things were going … and going … and going. Then about six months into this bizarre social experiment we began to fragment and … she left. With her went one of so few beacons of light, and I was suddenly adrift in a quickly darkening sea of clutter and aloneness. Hence the words etched in the chorus of the song:
“I miss you
it’s true.
Come back Signal,
fill this void.
Clear as
crystal,
be my Signal
end this noise.”
I know aloneness isn’t a unique phenomenon, and I’m all too aware of the toll that the last two years has taken on relationships and families. It has been one of the most trying, frustrating and uncertain periods of time in my memory. But it has also been fascinating. It’s not every day that through forced isolation we realize how often and many of our thoughts are not our own! Where does my mind end and yours begin? Is there a clear demarcation between my culture and me? Am I free or is free will an illusion? Who am I when I am not lost in the chatter and the noise of my culture? Can love and intimacy act as a lighthouse in the fog of modernity? I think it can, and I think it does. Our closest relationships, when operating at specific vibrations, can be mirrors held up to the parts of ourselves that are the most difficult to see and or face. A relationship can be a new window onto blind spots in our nascent self discovery.
Signal amid the deafening noise. Though hard won, what a beautiful and fascinating realization.
“Everything clanks and caterwauls without you.”
To make a short story long, she came back, and she came back before she’d heard the song I wrote inspired by the revelations I gathered in her absence. I don’t know if she knows that this song, “Dime In My Dryer,” is necessarily about her. Maybe it’s about more than that, but I hope she understands that it is in the mirror she holds up to me, that I have come to know myself more clearly (as crystal) than I ever have before. Thanks for that, and thank you for listening to this new offering.
“It’s your ship on my seas
that cuts across the black,
a moonlit trail of V’s
come waving off of your back.
A tide to quiet the noise…
the dime in my dryer.”
Brandon Boyd
I have been alone for quite some time... during the pandemic my youngest daughter got married and moved out of state. I live in Southern California and all my children/grandchildren live in other parts of the country now. Just as I was getting used to living without someone needing something from me on a daily basis and having no one to say goodnight to and then my mother suddenly passed away. Less than 2 weeks later my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, less than a few months after that my dad was diagnosed with liver cancer and about two days ago my brother had a seizure. These past 6 months have been really rough... however, these past 2 years have not been all bad, I have enjoyed the quiet even though there have been times the complete silence has made me wonder if I have lost my hearing. I know this pandemic has been hard for many but I do think everyone needs more time alone and in a quiet space. We are all in desperate need of healing mind, body and soul and I honestly feel the best way to do that is in a quiet, non-chaotic decent chunk of time and space.
In my case I have never been a very sociable person so in a way this whole situation of isolation did not stun me so much in that aspect but it helped me to rediscover myself again with something that I had put aside due to lack of time and which is my passion .. I began to dedicate time every day to drawing and learning new artistic methods and techniques, I discovered digital art and began to participate in virtual calls through the networks while they suggested a new technique to inspire me even more to through the music its lyrics and sounds and capture the emotions that it transmits to me. Likewise, it has been a nice period with my family because we have been more united although I really hope that soon we can return to true normality, but life will always leave us learning about everything and I am grateful for it