Years ago, I would hear voices. Not often, but even one time is enough to make you appreciate that it does not happen again, or at least frequently. Mostly, I would hear a voice that resembled mine, or something speaking in clear, distinct terms to me. Most of these events happened before sleep, so I figured I was perhaps asleep, or maybe my mind had entered some strange state within the liminal space surrounding slumber. Again, these auditory hallucinations were infrequent and transient, and then they faded from my life. The closest I get is while climbing, I sometimes think that feedback provided by someone is for me. I know that it is not, but it’ll seem like the words are directed at me, in direction as well as content. However, I know that it’s almost always the case that I need to lift my left or right leg or move a hand to a given handhold, so the advice is nearly always close enough to believable, for people shouting advice tend to be the people who aren’t providing all that useful, or at least nuanced, information. Occasionally, it’ll turn out to be a person I know who had said, “nice work,” or whatever, for upon descending or looking down I’d see a smile beaming my way, hello.
A part of me has always wondered about varied perspectives. In high school, I’d switch sides of a classroom debate, from pro to con, as the argument interested me. As a child, I’d try to stare blankly to cause optical distortions in patterns, and the premise of DARE backfired completely as the police officer explained that drugs would distort reality and cause you to feel things not otherwise normal, which all sounded wildly fun and, hell, people must do this stuff because it’s enjoyable in some way or another, hence the few drug-filled, if not fueled, movie scenes I had witnessed by the time I had reached fifth grade. So, I try to imagine one-off situations as I traverse through the day.
Accordingly, earlier today I strolled down a suburban block with my roommate. Birds were everywhere, as they tend to be. Surely, they might be the most plentiful animal larger than an insect. So many birds, everywhere, woodpeckers, wrens, chickadees, starlings, and so on. They’re singing and calling and bickering and generally flying all about doing the bird-things that birds do. What if, I wondered, there were no birds, and I simply heard their din throughout the day. Auditory hallucinations plaguing me. Distracting me. What it would it be like to suffer from such schizophrenia. Nothing else, no voices, nothing to drive me batty or violent or irascible outside of hearing persistent avian articulations. With my eyes closed, as I walked for several steps, the world I know collapsed, for I found myself in a sans bird world populated by a perturbed mind that clicked along as it passed about the world, its machinations internally made audible by bird song.