How do you feel connected?

It's a strange thing, noise. Isn't it? Sometimes it can be our best and most comforting friend. At other times it can be our cruelest and most menacing foe.

What I find interesting though, is how noise can come to be friend or a comfort. The sound of metal drilling down the block that comes in through the alley, muffled in its distance and non-harmonious in its randomness, a comfort? The honk of a cab horn from our front window, extending beyond necessity in its own frustration, a comfort? The late night banter of club goers, a comfort? These are the background noises of the city where I live. It's one of the most densely populated areas of the planet, and while you wouldn't know it most days, these sounds are but little ways in which you become accustomed to your neighbors. In fact, for the large part, these are the only interactions we have with our neighbors at all. Distant, removed, and impersonal as they are, I still find comfort in them, in knowing that somehow we really aren't alone here.

Urban life is a strange beast. I think it throws up little challenges like noise in order to keep us on our toes. It reminds us that we are but humans living together in the world, and that for all comforts and amazing means of creating our own realities, we must still live together. I can call my family through my computer and feel like I am in Kansas, Nebraska, or Minnesota, yet I don't know any other tenants of our building. Noise helps to keep it real. It helps to keep me grounded here, and not to forget what an amazing journey we are on.