Headphones

What is music but arbitrary noise?
What is arbitrary noise but a distraction from silence?
What is silence but an unskippable lull?

We choose playlists, curate their songs. We more often than not end up skipping through them anyway to listen to specific songs while never listening to others, even when they were all equally placed in the playlist.

We flit between distractions, looking for something—ANYTHING—to put an end to the silence. We may not particularly want the distractions, but they’re more attractive than the alternative.

We cannot move past lulls, cannot move the playhead up a few seconds, cannot avoid times in life when there is just empty silence. We must observe this silence and acknowledge it, accept it if not fully embrace it.