#dont stop

i know intimately what arthur is talking about here. i think i haven't been able to be in silence for the last 5 years. i always have some noise in the background and if i don't - i try to distract my brain - reading, watching, ACTIVELY thinking about smth. even going to bed i turn some youtube videos to serve as background noise.

in rare moments of silence around me it's like a torture, i'm alone with my thoughts and i need to get out. the silence itself is not a state - it's a bridge between noise from the world to noise from my head.

what i'm getting at is that ever since i started thinking about kayne's brain as the always turned on radio - this moment in part 12 is linked to this simile.

i wonder if he felt relief when he had this moment of silence - finally, he's the messenger no more, the outer gods do not speak, the voices are silent. finally, silence. silence which is broken when there's a new voice - otherworldly nyarlathotep and his memories slipping through the cracks and filling kayne's head with a noise so loud he's cringing.

have you ever had your music in earbuds paused, then you forget about that and listen to smth else (e.g. voice message from a friend) raising a volume and then you return to music AND IT'S SO FUCKIN LOUD YOU FEEL LIKE YOU CAN DIE FROM A SHEER LOUDNESS, like your brain will explode?

mix it up with a pure dread of realising your head will never be silent, with each and every new nyarlathotep killed your head becomes more and more "crowded". no wonder kayne was suicidal - live like that for a day you will want to tear out your own ear canal - kayne lived like that for god knows how long.

when i was small we had this big old mp3 player which could work as a radio or you could play your own tapes. it was old even then and the signal, as you can imagine, wasn't the best - one wrong touch could disturb the reciever and all you could hear until you fixed it - loud static mixed with old player screech. i imagine kayne like that.

also it fascinates me how there is a distinct parallel between kayne's wish for silence but inability to gain it versus arthur's "odd sensation" at it.

again with their different sense of self (i talked about it here) now regarding silence in their head - arthur had it but was robbed of it when he met john, and yet when he gained it again (in coda and in 58) he was INSTANT to gain the voice in his head back. for arthur silence = loneliness, he's afraid of it, he's afraid of being abandoned and being alone. knowing what we know of his backstory - I'm not surprised.

kayne doesn't understand it - for him arthur is WEIRD to want that radio turned on, he doesn't understand how arthur can choose to gain john back even if it takes his sight away.

that's because for arthur radio silence is about loneliness and for kayne it's about control. he says it himself during first meeting:

"Look, I often wish I had two voices in my head Instead of, like, seven million?"