Living the Noise (By Eduardo Lopez)

Christmas songs are on the radio again. But I hardly even noticed. 

I live in a world of constant noise. I always have. I mean, “Come on! It’s L.A.!” (I Love LA). It's how things work here. Get a grip. 

As a society, we pass by things so fast; time is always taken for granted. We only reach to grasp for something when it is gone. Distracted by the noise of the media, there is no real way to keep track of time. Like, what happened to Brat Summer? Ballerina flats? I seem to fall behind, stuck between the rapid movements of the pop culture's hyperfixations; suffocating in yesterday's noise.

I often think about how our minds are conditioned to bite off more than they can chew. So when there is silence, they start to feed on themselves. Sometimes I'm disgusted by how well-fed my mind is. Not by substance but by distraction. I have become too overstimulated to focus on the things I have overconsumed and the way they make me feel. But after cleansing my media intake for the sake of my well-being, I can finally process and focus on the things that swept past me. And since Anything Goes (Emma Chamberlain)… Here I go.

In the silence of my bedroom, I fill the void with the millions of conversations held on the internet. It started with my love for film during the pandemic. The stories on screen touched me at a time marked by the “Renegade” (an extremely viral TikTok dance). I was so moved by everything I watched that I wrote songs and poems about the stories and beloved fan-fiction. But as school-related burnout fucked me over, I couldn’t find the motivation to watch films anymore, let alone any video over thirty minutes. To fill that space, voices of podcasters and chronically online critics infiltrated my mind. In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele, Emergency Intercom, Katy Hessel’s The Great Women Artists, and Upstairs Neighbors are a few that come to mind. In my absolute boredom and absence from reality, their conversations and experiences make me feel less alone. They cloud my mind with noise. Haze my vision with theirs. I've reached a point where podcasts and Substack posts have become the only “productive” media I consume. They bring me a burst of inspiration and passion until I lose it all again from sheer idleness. 

Sometimes I get bored and drift back into doomscrolling my Instagram and YouTube feeds since podcasts seem to imitate lectures in my brain-rotted mind. I spend hours scrolling past fast-paced content without feeling a single ounce of satisfaction. I keep up with celebrities and influencers, nurturing one-sided relationships through a 9” screen. The amount of time I have spent watching Timothee Chalamet edits will be studied by a team of future scientists seeking to understand what went wrong with our generation. 

We have become vessels to the feed. And I, a computer of a person, set out to inspire the future of AI. I often spiral about the idea of being used to develop new artificial intelligence. I grew up with screens shoved in my face. At seven, I was following Tana Mongeau. By eleven, I had been cancelled twice by stan twitter communities. So why wouldn’t Elon Musk use my brain to program future generations of unintellectual humans? There's this joke online that one day people will have chips programming their brains for government purposes, and people will be fighting for Hot Cheetos (Drew Phillips). You ought’a know I'll be praying for Trader Joe's Takis. 

But this is not the noise I want or need. It is everything but. I’ve been disrupting my creativity with hollow content that has made me believe that I have no creativity left to offer the world, or even myself. I compared myself relentlessly to celebrities and online creators until I lost all passion. I did not recognize myself. A blank journal used to be a clean slate and an opportunity. Then it became a terrifying sign that I had nothing left to say. I ached to return to the person I once was. I tried forcing myself back into creating, but couldn’t. I deleted TikTok and lost my online streak of six years. I was on my own. I didn’t know what to do without it. My creativity reached an all-time low. I was no longer a vessel for creativity or digital nonsense. I was a vessel for nothing. I felt like “David” in Lorde's song, “I don't belong to anyone.”

Then, like the Deus Ex Machina of my life, Rosalia announced her new album Lux. I know it sounds extra, but it really did simulate “divine intervention” (Lux) in my life. It was released, and I was changed “for good” (Wicked: For Good). This album revived my “lust for life” (Lana Del Rey). The music moved me in ways I had been yearning to move in forever. Rosalia sang in thirteen different languages to honor truth in her art. Her 15-track album draws inspiration from the journeys and studies of spiritual women across the world who sought divinity. She wove their stories into her own, exploring how divinization can manifest from creativity. Through the layered fabric of her art, she reminded me why I once created, rekindling the creative spark I had been searching for.

After the resurrection of my creative drive, I’ve begun watching films again. This time, TV shows even. It's only been exactly ten days since Lux came out as I am writing this, so I can't say much. But it feels different this time. And I will grasp it tighter so that it lasts. 

Charli xcx recently published a Substack post about creating art. Beautifully written and thought-provoking, it inspired whatever this is. She was vulnerable about how “stuck” she felt and how messy growth is. It aligned with my raw sentiments and encouraged me to share them. Her’s was written to share her collaboration in “Wuthering Heights,” which is unfathomably everything I need and more, while mine was written to criticize Gen Z’s generational curse of not being able to grasp the voyage of time. 

What I am saying is that today we live in a society that does not hold on to things, but lets go. Trends are constantly evolving and confusing our psyches, blinding us from our truest creative instincts and opinions. Although I remain interrupted by the noise of the media, I am getting better at listening to myself. 

Tracing the LA scene, there are millions of wanderers living the noise through their headphones. Wired or not, we are all linked by the constant buzz. 

As we get older, the holidays just come and go. Next year, who knows if we will tune in to hear Christmas music on the radio again, or even notice it behind all this noise?