I'm really good at sleeping on planes. I mean, I smell jet fuel and I'm out; I'm asleep for takeoff.
The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.
There's different ways to approach music for sleeping. Things like white noise are functional, like a lullaby. This is more like an inquiry, a question about how music and sleep fit together.
As far as the sounds on the space station, it's pumps, fans, motors, certain modules are louder than others, but it's generally a pretty nice working environment. It's not too loud or too smelly.
Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words.
Don DeLillo's 'White Noise,' which I read when I was 19. It showed me that a book can be funny as hell and deadly serious.
'419 scams,' named for a clause from the Nigerian penal code, are such a part of the white noise of the digital age that we no longer notice them.
On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.
I fall asleep to a movie every night! I don't have a go-to movie, but I like Netflix or whatever I can find. Usually, it's just noise in the background; I think it's damage from living in New York, where it's so noisy.
Unfortunately I don't live by a Target now, so I just go to a regular Starbucks as opposed to a Starbucks nested inside a Target, which is my ideal situation. That works out for me. I like that white noise, those interruptions, and the people around me.
I can't sleep without the TV on. It doesn't matter where it is. I don't like silence. My ears ring from loud music.
Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.
It is not enough for us to merely continue to talk about and contribute to the echo chamber of white noise of what's wrong with America or for candidates to spout off silly poll-tested talking points about national security or foreign policy.
I'm a very self-conscious person; I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances; it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise.
When I'm in New York, I have, like probably everybody else in Manhattan, a white-noise generator to use at night: a Marpac Dual-Speed Dohm-DS. It is terrific. I've never slept better in the city.
You know how Bed Bath & Beyond sells those white noise machines that help you sleep? And they usually make ocean noises? I want one that's just David Gergen gently muttering about the economy.
When I am in a hotel, and I turn off the lights and the TV, I just freak out. I turn the TV back on and don't get any sleep.
When my parents got divorced, I wanted to spend my time laying in the garage listening to the washer and dryer. Loud, immersive, changing. It was music to me.
If I'm staying in a hotel or I'm sleeping on my own I have the hairdryer on.
I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, 'Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?'
You can only do what you can do in this world. If you start thinking of all the white noise out there, I think you'll go crazy.
If the room falls silent for a moment, all I hear is white noise.
When I'm trying to go to sleep and there are little noises, like a clock ticking or a fan squeaking, it drives me completely insane.
I'm much calmer when there's no TV or music playing in the background.
I rolled back onto the lawn and pressed my forehead to the ground again and made the noise that Father calls groaning. I make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. It is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else
