What is difficult—indeed impossible—is for a being like me to take pleasure in being forced, from morning until night, to listen to the chatter of sports and tabloid gossip.

 In conversations I always searched for a pause; in noise I always searched for silence. And when it came—even for a few seconds—I remembered my self, breaking the surface of unreality to breathe at last, even if it soon plunged back beneath the water. To call this “depression” is, of course, effortless. What is difficult—indeed impossible—is for a being like me to take pleasure in being forced, from morning until night, to listen to the chatter of sports and tabloid gossip.