Those Quiet Moments: The Hum

                                       

I have a distinct memory of being a small child.  Kindergarten, or maybe pre, and being awoken in the middle of the night by something to this day I'm unsure of.   A low level, quiet, and distant humming. Barely there, but enough to make me get out of bed and wander the house, eventually looking out windows.  It was baffling, I found no answers, and went back to bed. 

This continued for years.  I have memories of being in elementary school, living in rural Wisconsin, hearing it, chalking it up to distant traffic and disregarding it.  Then later in life, I lived in places nowhere near highways, or even roads with frequent traffic and hearing it.  The Hum. 

The Hum.  Out there, lurking.

In High School, there I was, during the Witching Hour, peering out my bedroom window, head cocked to one side like a curious German Shepherd.  In Trade School, hearing it seep into my ear canals as I slept to a pause in my sister's basement in Kenosha, WI.  Oh, still getting up, walking the house, checking the windows, wanting, needing an explanation so rest could come.  

Wanting confirmation that I wasn't crazy, schizophrenic and hearing things that weren't there.

"What the hell is that?"  An eerie, consistent, and ethereal deep hum.  I told no one.

I heard it through the days in the 90's when my oldest was an infant, then the 2000's.....the break of the early 2010's, the year I lived in my brothers upstairs bedroom, following me like a magnet on an anvil.  Now, in Texas, it still sometimes crawls into my ears in those overnight hours when slumber cracks open and drops me out onto some kind of ledge...

It brings to mind the album cover of Manfred Mann's 70's album,  The Roaring Silence.  Just faint enough, but present enough to drive me insane.  Will I ever have an answer for that goddamn hum?

I have tinnitus now, after 20 years of working in a loud factory environment.  Bad enough that business took two knees and a pair of discs functioning capabilities, it had to screw up my ability to truly enjoy music. Then I had a severe sinus infection 10 years ago that reduced my hearing capacity in my left ear even further.  

But under that grinding, staticky, high pitched whine that is tinnitus' calling card, often in dead silence of night...

Welcome my son.  Welcome to the Machine.

Underneath all that.  The Hum does return, just to remind me that it's never going to go away.

But I guess I'm not alone: