I've been thinking a lot about quiet.

One of my partners has wanted the apartment more quiet lately, 
and what this has meant is that I'm noticing a lot more of the weird 
ambient noise that is all around.

That's not a bad thing, per se, because normally I try to have 
constant background sound on so that my head doesn't feel full of 
silence but habituating to a kind of quiet isn't necessarily bad for 
me.

I hear the hum of every electrical device. The slight whinge of pipes 
as water starts flowing through them. The distant echo of trains a 
couple of miles away. In silence there's so much sound it's nearly 
overwhelming. I think that's the reason why I often find myself 
wanting background sound like streaming on.

A human voice overrides the myriad combinations that the overlap of 
all these ambient sounds creates, simplifying the world down to 
something easy and flat.