The 4,000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh recounts how one of the gods, unable to sleep through humanity’s racket and presumably a little cranky, opts “to exterminate mankind.” The earliest noise complaint in history also concerns a bad night’s sleep. He wrote in a text message that he felt as though someone was launching “an acoustic attack” on his home.įrom April 2019: James Fallows on leaf blowers and activism As the months passed, he felt like he was in a war zone. He sensed it coming from everywhere at once. The noise hummed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like a mosquito buzzing in his ear, only louder and more persistent. Each night, he’d will himself to sleep, ears plugged and head bandaged, but he could feel the whine in his bones, feel himself getting panicky as it droned on and on and on and on and on. When that still wasn’t enough, he moved into the guest room, where the hum seemed slightly fainter. When that didn’t help, he also tied a towel around his head. “That was when I started getting concerned,” he observed later. He got up to shut the window, but that made no difference at all. He had just closed his eyes to go to sleep one night when he heard it: EHHNNNNNNNN. The Brittany Heights neighborhood in Chandler, Arizona (Cassidy Araiza) Where was it coming from? Would it stop? Would it get worse? He started spending more time inside. It was aggravating, and he felt mounting anxiety every day it continued. But whenever he went out to cook or read, there was that damn whine-on the weekends, in the afternoon, late into the night. Thallikar had installed a firepit and Adirondack chairs in his backyard. This being Arizona, Thallikar and his neighbors rewarded themselves for surviving the punishing summers by spending mild winter evenings outside: grilling, reading, napping around plunge pools, dining under the twinkle of string lights. In early 2015, Thallikar discovered that the hum had followed him home. The whine became a constant, annoying soundtrack to his walks.Īnd then it spread. Evening after evening, he realized, the sound was there-every night, on every street. Just one single, persistent note: EHHNNNNNNNN.
It sounded a bit like warped music from some far-off party, but there was no thump or rhythm to the sound. On another walk a few days later, he heard it again. It was during one of these strolls that Thallikar first became aware of a low, monotone hum, like a blender whirring somewhere in the distance. In the evenings, after work, Thallikar liked to decompress by taking long walks around Brittany Heights, following Musket Way to Carriage Lane to Marlin Drive almost as far as the San Palacio and Clemente Ranch housing developments.
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