Too much noise

Today I sat at my desk and thought, quite seriously that my head might explode.

It was like I could feel the pressure building up inside my skull, like an over-pumped balloon, with no means of letting it out, other than perhaps to run around the room screaming my head off like some kind of crazy bastard.

I was going to say it's hard to explain, but if that was the case I might as well stop writing as the whole intention of the post is to go some way to explaining it. People say things they don't mean a lot, at least I do, I think.

What I really meant was, it sounds kind of melodramatic, but that's really not the intention, it's more observational than 'woe is me' kind of stuff.

Just lately it feels like all the noise of the world is building to an unbearable pitch at a decibel level beyond anything a fleet of jet engines could get close to, and it's all building inside my head and feels like it's about to go bang!

Everyday I walk into my office and into a maelstrom of white noise and media cacophony, and I don't mean necessarily the people in the office, but the activity we generate inside, like one of those cartoons when Bugs Bunny opens the door on a room where the noise bursts out and then slams it shut again for silence.

It's similar to what I imagine it is like being inside the Hadron Collider when millions of electrons and particles are racing round at screaming speeds, only the noise is generated by a million pointless news stories racing round the internet and broadcast news and eventually landing wet with ink on the inside of a dozen newspapers.

We live in a world where the slightest indiscretion, off the record comment, misunderstanding or harmless and insignificant observation dropped into the mediaverse in the small hours of the morning, begins to spread and build and grow and expand, stretch and distort beyond anything resembling reason by lunchtime. By drivetime it's the topic of the day, by six it's headline top story, ten it's a full blown scandal and then it's someone's job to prove how the country is going to implode under the weight of the crisis by the weekend.

And all the time, the same tiny kernel of truth is passed around so many times, embellished, interpreted, analysed and laundered through the media machine so that there is really nothing left.

Whether it's the front page claiming killer spiders are invading the UK, based on the word of somebody who thought it might be true, or the endless ‘gates’ from Pleb to Sachs, and every one gets further and further from the original Watergate and lessens in impact and public interest as a result.

Sally Bercow having a drink, Roy Hodgson’s team talk, the Kardashians giving birth, wearing bikinis, having new hair, old hair, Beyonce’s lack of hair, hairgate, Kanyegate, Simon Cowell’s girlfriend wondering how many millions it will take to bring up their baby, while, I’m afraid to say, two thirds of the world live and die on a dollar a day, millions of kids still growing up with Aids in Africa, the Middle East imploding in a war that stretches back a thousand years and men and women who do not look like they’ve walked out of a salon, wondering just how the hell to find the merest scrap of motivation to carry on with the daily fight for existence.

And yet, and yet, and yet, the noise inside my head isn’t, as Obi Wan memorably said the sound of a million voices suddenly crying out in terror, but the utterly ridiculous banality of hearing about Harry Style’s new tattoo, somebody from a girl band eating some food in a place which sells food, with somebody she knows and somebody from TOWIE or Made In Chelsea, as far from the realms of talent, intellect and credibility as it is possible to get without actually going back to the big bang, who has apparently taken her inspiration for her hair style from Marge Simpson. #margegate presumably.
But I'm sure I'll get over it and the pressure in my head will recede once I find my Halloween-themed onesie to wear to the office next week. A maze.