Words for My Enjoyment

I Am Afraid Of Your Musical Nose

December 17th, 2005

No, fear isn’t a strong word to describe how I feel.

It’s just that every time you and I seem to have a conversation, I hear more than your voice blahblahblah-ing away and I hear more than my voice blahblahblah-ing back. I hear more than the birds in the trees and the crickets in the brush. I hear more than the general hum of society humhumhum-ing away ambiguously in the background.

I hear your nose — and it’s making music.

Yes, what IS music? It is a question that crosses the boundaries of countries, the color of skin, it bridges gaps between waring tribes and communicates emotion and passion and creative vision to all the people of the world…

But when music comes out of your nose, it gives me the willies.

It’s not like you’re the Steve Austin of musical noses. It’s not like you got in a really bad accident and after being rushed to the Emergency Room while the heart surgeons and the skin grafters and the nurses were hovering over you bringing you back to life that some highly-intelligent doctor spoke up and said, “Hey, let’s make his nose play music when he breathes. That would be really darn cool.”

No, nothing like that has happened (I know this because you have no scars and even though people say that after you get scars if you rub Vitamin E on the scars they’ll go down — if you had scars from an accident like that I suspect you’d still be able to see some remnant of those scars no matter how much VItamin E you’re rubbing on your wounds).

Yet every single time we talk, in the moment you take a breath through your nose, in between your thoughts on Tupperware containers and how you’d like to see how long a hard-boiled egg could stay fresh inside, there’s an almost-grating flute/ocarina type sound coming from your nose.

It has rhythm.

It has structure.

It’s piping along with a 4/4 beat.

Sometimes I think I hear When The Saints Go Marching In, Jingle Bells and Rockin’ the Suburbs by Ben Folds. Sometimes I think I hear Mary Had A Little Lamb and Mustang Sally. I think I may have heard the theme song to Hill Street Blues coming out of your nostrils as well.

And sometimes I sorta want to sing along. Which scares me.

What’s gotten lodged up in your nostrils that causes such music to get piped on out? What’s blocking the passage of air that causes the musical notes to play? Why do I find the need to sing along? (Of course, it may stem back to an OCD I have where anytime I hear a rhythmic sound (washing machine spinning, street construction banging, TiVO button blooping) my head makes it into a song that requires me to sing along.)

But this, of course, has nothing to do with your musical nose.

Just like your co-workers sometime ask for you to turn off your radio or turn down the computer speakers, shouldn’t they all be able to ask you to clear out your nasal passageways so that the music stops? Just like your friends can tell you to go see a doctor about that cough you’ve got — can’t they also ask you to take an anti-histamine? Just like you pour Liquid Drano down your showers’ pipes can’t you pour something in that Yankee Doodle-playing nose of yours?

It would help me greatly. It would help my psyche. Can’t you take a hint from Don McLean when he said that there was a day in question when the music died?

I think it’s time for your musical nose to take a dive.

Posted under Body Parts, Fears, Music. |