by sophiewolfe
There’s a lot of listening to do in your first semester of college. You have to listen to the music the guys across the hall play in order to find out if they are cool or creepy. You have to listen for the sounds of skateboard wheels in the background to make sure you don’t get run over by some dude wearing carpenter pants. You have to listen to the right song on the way to your morning class or else you will literally become a puddle on the ground. There’s the whole matter of listening to your professors talk when you honestly have no godforsaken clue what they are saying.
But the constancy of one sound in particular has given my fall semester meaning. This is The Sneeze. Look, there is something to be said for that terrible dumb noise. It reminds us that even as we put on our stupid outfits and send our silly little emails and attempt to understand and control the patterns of human nature, at the end of the day we’re really just a bunch of uncontrollable snot vessels with legs.
My roommate, who is allergic to being alive, has one of the best sneezes out there, and every time I hear it I am reminded that I am simply a speck in space. Her Sneeze Of A Thousand Suns, as I like to call it, reminds me of my own insignificance, that all life on earth is strange and fleeting and that we can never really know why we are here. It also often reminds me that Oh My God I Am Still Sleeping And I Need To Get The Hell Up Right Now Or Else!!!!! In the age of coronavirus/ anti-maskers/ all out American apocalypse, germs have become pretty much an enemy of the state, if not an all-out fascist symbol. And yeah, going around just crazy-sneezing on everything right now is a worse idea than selling acid to a cop. Definitely don’t do that. Probably don’t do either of those things!
But yo everybody gotta sneeze! Don’t ask me the science behind that; I am a simple English major. But I know it to be true! Sometimes you have just got to sneeze. When my ears catch on the sound of a sneeze, I do not think Oh God I Have Got To Get Away From This Monster. Instead, I am reminded that we are all the same dumb reflexive snot machines. The professor that terrifies me when he asks very direct questions about the existence of God, the girl who I thought was intimidating because she looked like Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused, the roommate who I barely even knew a month ago. There’s literally no need to be intimidated by anyone, because we are all just big trash bins of mucus! Is that not comforting??
Categories: october 6, 2020, sophie wolfe, tunes