Jay Parr's brain doesn't work like yours. It's noisy as hell in there. He lives with his partner and child in Greensboro NC, where he's a lecturer in UNCG's nontraditional Humanities program. Anti-Heroin Chic, Streetcake Magazine, and Variant Literature Journal have also been gracious enough to host his work lately. Find Jay on Twitter @crankypacifist.
JAY PARR
COMPANION
The noise is.
That’s all. It just is.
The noise is a shortwave radio scanning the dial. The noise is an AM radio not quite on the station. The noise is a car stereo left on seek. The noise is a 56k modem handshake. The noise is the babbling theatre before the house lights go dark. The noise is a dog lick lick lick lick licking his pillow. The noise is traffic, a squeaky old truck on a country road, a ten-lane interstate exceeding the speed limit. The noise is the metro train passing the freight train beside the arterial street beneath the highway.
The noise is words. The noise is language. No. Languages. The noise is babble. The noise is the shout-radio rage jockey and the fundamentalist preacher bellowing hellfire and damnation. The noise is speaking in tongues. The noise is tongues. All the tongues, all at once. The noise is the bird calls and the monkey howls and the insect susurrations and all the competing overtalk of the tropical jungle. The noise is cacophony.
The noise doesn’t give a fuck what you’re trying to tell me. The noise couldn’t care less what I’m trying to write, trying to think, trying to accomplish. The noise disregards the calendar, the deadlines, the responsibilities of adult life, the million nagging demands of this needlessly complicated world.
The noise is music competing with music, the practice wing of the conservatory. The noise is hammering typewriters, a ‘60s newsroom approaching deadline.
The noise is oddly silent when I draw. Or it was, when I did draw.
The noise is the roar of the abyss. The noise is the singing of the universe and the grinding of mindless entropy. The noise is, has always been, and ever will be.
The noise is.
The noise.