L'Inhibition

Lyrics

The kitchen at three AM.Just me and the blue pilot light on the stove.And the hum.Always the hum.The General Electric, from nineteen ninety-four.A gift from my mother when I moved in.It sings its one note, a low G sharp.Hasn't stopped for twenty-seven years.It's the baseline of this house.The soundtrack to toast and coffee, to midnight ice cream, to staring at the linoleum and trying to solve for X.It was there when you left.It was there when the movers came.My brain just... paints it over.A primer coat for the quiet.They call it latent inhibition.A mercy from the mind.Learning what to ignore so you can live.The sanity of not hearing the motor turn,the clock tick, the blood in your own ears.A filter, a kindness, a letting goof the sound that never changes.Robert Lubow wrote it down in '59.He saw how the animal brain learns what doesn't matter.The bell that rings and rings with no dinner to follow.Eventually, it's just a sound in the air.Like the radiator's hiss in winter.Or the faint, high whine of the television when it's off.My brain does this for me.It erases the constants.So I have room to notice the new thing.The bird at the window.The key in the lock.Your voice, when it was still here.They say the ones who can't do it...the ones who hear it all...the hum, the tick, the traffic, the dust motes landing...are the artists. The visionaries.Or the ones who break.A fine line between seeing patterns everywhereand being haunted by the static.A blessing, to not be a genius.To have this one, simple, unearned grace.This latent inhibition.This mercy from the mind.Learning what to ignore just to survive.The sanity of not hearing the motor turn,the clock tick, the blood in your own ears.A filter, a kindness, a letting goof the sound that will not change.And then, it stops.The compressor kicks off.And the silence...is the loudest thing in the world.Now I hear everything.