September 15, 2023 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “Mind Mute”

Sometimes, after many minutes, maybe even an hour, I will realize my headphones are in but I have not turned anything on, that I have been hearing myself speak so steadily, and without pause, that there is no silence to circle in on and I think about how constantly I want to quiet myself, how desperately I will lunge to leverage the lack of sound with something loud and relentless so that my mind might be put on hold for a moment, because it feels like, by the time I wake up, I am already depleted by what I’ve dreamed and I am ready for a very long break, some substantial time away from a subconscious that says, okay, come on in, and opens the door for something awful, something that makes the whole house tremble, like it is testing my capacity for terror.