BRING THE NOISE

A vast array of gadgets make it easy to blot out sonic intrusions-maybe a little too easy

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I HAVE ALWAYS been fussy about noise. I don't mind overhearing people talking, but I recoil from other instruments in the discordant orchestra of everyday life: open-mouthed chewing, rhythmic sniffing or coughing, phone alerts, pen-clicking, nail-clipping.

For a long time, I was able to tune these sounds out or politely remove myself from situations where they were bothering me. But during lockdown, when I was forced to work from home over a neighbor's loud metal workshop, my ambient fussiness festered into a fixation. The problem was that there was nowhere to politely remove myself to.

Fortunately, there were plenty of noise-canceling solutions to pick from. Whenever I sat down to work, I would put on my Jabra headphones and fire up an app called Noisli, which allows users to create layered soundscapes. Over that I played music on Spotify, swaddling myself in a curated cacophony. I kept my headphones on all day, thrilled by the control I had over my environment. I had always envied people who seemed unbothered by distractions, and now I was one of them.

That was just the beginning. My noisy neighbor moved out, but my devices stayed. I bought a loud air purifier and put it on the left side of my bed. I then put a white-noise machine on the right side. With the ceiling fan on, I slept enveloped in a womb-like whirring. I even got a portable white-noise machine meant for babies and toted it around my apartment like a daemon. I was safe. I was smug.

Then human error abruptly ejected me from my sound cocoon. Packing in a hurry for a work trip to Albuquerque this spring, I forgot my baby whitenoise machine, my earplugs, the earbuds I exercise with, and the charger for my noise-canceling headphones, which crapped out midway through the flight. I bought new earplugs upon arrival, but they were too big for my narrow canals. I didn't sleep well that night or the next, or on the plane home.