White Noise Machine

I hear voices in the white noise machine. I have to play it at full volume due to the baby who sleeps a few feet away from me and likes to repeatedly scratch the side of her pack ‘n play in the middle of the night. This is the self soothing method she chose. I keep telling her it’s creepy. Something from Volume 8. Harry Potter and the Quarantined Baby of Ah!-Wake. ... There WILL be a volume 8. 

Sometimes the white noise machine makes jokes. They come from this “ghost comic lady” voice who I discovered does my bit about making up new words that don’t exist for things that need definitions. I was a little offended until I realized I could steal her stuff since “ghost comic lady” probably doesn’t have a blog, or is real. 

Anyway, she says stuff like, “Annie, there should be a word for guilt free cake.” 

I’m like, “There is. Muffin.”

“Dang it,” she whispers.

“What about a word for boxes that are huge and contain small things,” I whisper even quieter as the baby stirs.

“Oh! Toosmallinthere!” she says.

“Smooshing a phrase together is not a new word.” 

“Amazany? Roomyship? Penthousemail?” she whispers.

“One of those will land,” I say.

Then she asks the exact same questions I’ve been wondering about!

“Why do old people always have ‘a bag for that’? And is there a word for seeing my toes too much in the summer? How long would it take to gather enough hair from the handfuls I pull from Maya’s fists every hour to make a sweater? Why do we have linen closets but never say ‘can you throw that linen over me, I’m a little cold?” Do people realize that eating oatmeal raisin cookies means that someone has put not one, but multiple grapes in there? Is there a word for the specific type of guilt felt when you use your host’s toothpaste - and I mean - really dig around in the cabinet for it?”

“You read my mind!” I exclaim.

We’ve kind of become each other’s muses, “ghost comic lady” and me.

There are other voices in there too. Voices that defy the title of this machine. 

 I’ve been thinking a lot as I read Ibram X. Kendi’s books Stamped and How to Be An Anti Racist.

 Why do we call it a white noise machine? Maybe because white (people) noise in an echo chamber of only white (people) noise, pacifies and causes us to hear less of what’s true?

White noise has been “shhing” people to sleep - away from the fight to end systemic and institutional racism. So what does it take to turn it off? How did people like John Brown, Lucretia Mott, and the Grimke sisters rise out of the pacifying white noise of pro slavery to fight against it? Maybe the question is not, what does it take to turn it off, but what does it take to turn up the volume on Black voices. They’ve been turned up. But what does it take for white people to hear. There are easy ways, like tapping a podcast by Austin Channing Brown or Tarana Burke or downloading Kendi’s books on audible. There are harder ways like acknowledging the unnoticed systemic white noise I have lived in that keeps racist systems alive. And then actively resisting these systems to change the white noise into an active music that pierces through the “shhhing” of complacent systems that oppress Black and Latinx people.

When you’re still up four times a night with a baby, the white noise machine really takes center stage in your imagination.

Whew.

I wouldn’t be able to end this blog without sharing how tired I am - like soul tired. Depleted. Drained. Covid fed up. I have not had a break away from two very young children (and all the guilt and shame that comes with being a mom in our society), my job is tumultuous in and of itself without having to lead 20 theatre teachers through a pandemic when we still have more questions than answers and the clock ticks ever closer to the start of school. I can’t stop thinking about the 140 teenagers I’m responsible for and the 38 new ones who I will have to “meet” for the first time online. How will I find the time and energy and creativity to do all this with no childcare?

Besides seeing my students every day, what I miss most is singing. (cue tears as I write this listening to my old LA community choir Selah on youtube). I miss the unity and power and energy that is emitted when singing as a group. This is why I like directing musicals with lots of ensemble numbers. I’m sending wonderful energy towards the sound and software people trying to figure out how multiple voices can be heard at once online. 

I get by with my amazingly playful and compassionate husband...I have mantras and deep belly breathing and funny television.

I just miss people so much. I miss our power when we are physically together. 

For this extrovert, I hope there is a little light soon. Until then, I continue with some stand up routine ideas in my delirious night sessions with “ghost comic lady” while Maya wakes 4 times a night.