When I go to bed in my apartment, I always turn on an oscillating fan at the foot of my bed. The fan serves a few purposes: keep temperature cooler, provide a steady, harmonic ambient noise, and buffer other noises. The harmonic sound of the fan turning side to side slightly lowers the intensity of the fan's noise when it is as far left or right as it will turn. I like that the sound is constant and consistent from night to night. I like to think that it helps me sleep. What is more important is my next point. The hum of the fan provides a steady noise that is not penetrated by distant or soft sounds like traffic, the TV in the other room, or people talking upstairs. It also acts as a buffer against anything louder than that such as loud music or people yelling outside.

Ambient noise is not a typical thing that I pay attention to, though, outside of my fan at night. When I think about it, there's almost always a constant noise whether it be the noise my bike makes when I pedal and the wind, or my teachers' or peers' constant lecture/discussion, respectively, of course, and if I'm home, I play music, talk to people, watch videos or play video games. I try not to listen to the silence. I have a roommate and a girl friend, but sheer silence in their absence gives an environment of lonesomeness (that couldn't have sounded more pathetic). Should I also mention that I'm easily startled by loud, unexpected sounds? F*ck the modern horror genre.

On Youtube, there is about an hour long documentary about the savant Daniel Tammet. He goes through official studies to test his mental capacity. One of the tests is based on how he can calculate huge numbers in a short time in his head. After easily completing the tasks, the researchers had a conclusion that a logic part of Tammet's brain was directly linked to an image part of his brain. Thus, when Tammet was given any number or equation of numbers, Tammet saw the everything (including the answers) as mental images. For a TED talk, Tammet briefly described his abilities and showed the audience that not only could he calculate large products, but he could also see words as color.
I would love to see the world this way, if only for a single day. I find reading very difficult as I get easily distracted and I constantly look for something else to do while reading. If I perceived reading a book a looking a canvas of artwork (similar to Tammet) I think that reading out of a text book would be slightly bearable, even if it is slightly bland compared to a poem. Color always makes things more interesting. Though I've had unfortunately little experience with it, my ultimate goal is to work as a cinematographer. I feel that I work better with the medium directly than trying to visualize what I want. Perhaps the vivid colors in the mathematical and lexicon world perceived by Tammet would make him an exceptional filmmaker, but alas, his passion lies elsewhere.

The film of extravegant color and scraping on the film fit to the notes of the jazz song playing. Although they're not coordinated by the exact note (mostly) the colors, patterns, and the oddities were brought into play during specific and fitting times in the music.The music's tempo and instrument defined and added to what was happening on screen. In contrast, yet in continuity, when instruments stopped, the screen went blank.Different objects danced around. Sometimes colored sploches moved around. Lights seemed to move sporadically, but when they came to a halt, they formed a solid vertical bar in relation to the note being played at that time. Once, many of the lights spots buzzed sporadically during a short flurry of notes. There were words at the end of the last sequence. [I used the last 30 seconds of time to complain about how I have ten minutes to walk across campus and eat lunch]