Ignorance is Bliss

"Hey, Erica, were you singing Cee Lo yesterday?"

I glanced nervously around the diner table, full of half full mugs of coffee and pools of grease upon which eggs and bacon recently sat. I'd been dreading this moment. The expectant faces of my downstairs neighbors waited as I gave an inward resigned sigh, "Yeah, probably," and then, "you could hear that?" I didn't want to know the answer, but I couldn't help myself.

Ever since I've come back, I've been much more attune to sounds. By that I mean the sounds I hear in my apartment and the sounds that other tenants might hear coming from mine. Let me just say that I love my neighbors. I live in the best shoebox building in Denver and it's full of amazing people who have become close friends of mine these past two years. That said, it's not that music and voices soaking into my apartment bother me, I just find it interesting that I never noticed it before. I guess four months in a big, sparsely-populated house with more than a foot of insulation from neighbors made me soft. Now, whenever I hear someone else, I immediately want to know what they can hear from me. I haven't wanted to ask, though, because if the answer was everything, I wouldn't be able to sing rawly and uninhibited anymore. Any time I sang to my shampoos or danced around my kitchen belting this, that or the other thing, I would be doing so knowing that everyone could hear me, and I don't know if I'm quite secure enough for that.

In the vinyl booth, I couldn't decide if I was relieved to know the answer or brokenhearted at what the answer was. Yes, it was me singing Cee Lo. I was singing it quite loudly because I was not aware that I was giving a free concert to an audience that can't just get up and leave cause they live there! I sang and I danced as I unloaded my dishwasher and hung up clothes and it was wonderful. Now I look back with nostalgia to yesterday afternoon, and, bittersweetly, I think to myself that ignorance is bliss.