Sounds like Music

One time I had taken some acid and was riding in a van with a bunch of people. The driver, who had not taken any of the stuff himself, pulled up to the top of a hill and opened the side door of the van. I heard lovely, melodic sounds. 

“Where is the beautiful music coming from?” I asked. Everyone in the van fell on the floor, laughing. Apparently, we were at some kind of factory or construction site, and the sounds I thought were beautiful music were actually the smashing, bashing sounds of machinery. 

I was quiet after that. I sometimes think about what happened that day. It was another experience of discovering that your reality is different from everyone else’s. Speaking out so naively and being shocked by everyone’s response.

Like being in the fifth grade when I was singing with my classmates and the teacher tells me I can’t sing. Something about not being able to carry a tune. Then, she wouldn’t let me sing anywhere. Not in the class play. Not in the school chorus. No place.  It must be related: If I can’t sing, I guess I can’t tell the difference between horrible noise and music.

It’s like in a dream when you’re speaking coherent sentences, and everyone around you hears only a strange kind of gibberish. And it’s like when you are explaining that someone or something is sending you a message by moving the objects on the table whenever you leave the room. You are trying to get help interpreting the message and the people you ask for help are all whispering and looking for the doctor’s phone number.

Sometimes it just happens that you hear things that other people don’t. Like a small voice that tells you there is danger in the breeze blowing through the house and it makes sense to you to find a long knife and take it with you into a very dark room and just sit there with the knife on your lap, just in case. You also know that if people were to see you with that knife on your lap, they’d be calling that doctor again.

So you learn to wait before you speak. You don’t ever say that the line on the left is the longest line even though you know it is. There was a psychological experiment where they tell you that three other people at the table think the line on the left is the shortest line just to see if you’ll agree, even though it is actually the longest line. You agree. Or at least, I did. It is safer to go along then to tell anyone what you really see and hear.

Just keep the music to yourself. Sing a soft song inside your own head. Don’t let anyone else hear it, and everything will be okay.

Madlynn Haber is a writer living in Northampton, Massachusetts.  Her work has been published in the anthology Letters to Fathers from Daughters, in Anchor Magazine, Exit 13 Magazine and on websites including: A Gathering of the Tribes, The Voices Project, The Jewish Writing Project, BoomSpeak, Quail Bell Magazine,Mused Literary Review, Hevria, Right Hand Pointing, Mothers Always Write and Mum Life Stories. 

A Song for Madlynn