Misophone

Odds are, if you’re here this week, it’s because you read about me in the New Republic. Welcome! Stop popping your gum. Seriously. In any case, here’s a blog post about the writing of Misophone, the demo of which you can download now, and which I hope to record as part of my next album soon.

WHAT MISOPHONIA IS

For those of you that don’t know, misophonia is a disorder that stems from a hard-wired direct connection between the limbic node and the auditory nerve. It causes its victims to react to trigger noises, which exist in the clicky-scrapey-ticky range (true technical term), to have a fight-or-flight response. You either end up in a conversation that you don’t understand with an angry misophone, or you wonder why that guy just glared at you and changed subway cars at the last stop, and is STILL GLARING AT YOU THROUGH THE WINDOW.

I, like most misophones, started showing indicators of the problem when I was about 12 — back then there wasn’t a name for it, so I ran a gamut of wrong diagnoses from Narcissism to OCD to plain old crazy.

If you read a newsgroup of us talking about our problem, you will get bored quickly, because we’re all, as my friend Joyce puts it, textbook cases. The symptoms, the triggers, the onset, the reactions — we’re all in the same gang, and we’d all love to get out of it.

WRITING

I was dating a girl that, as is often the case of people who date misophones, was having a hard time understanding the misophonia conversation. One night, I had a revelation: I had never tried writing a song about this! I then attempted four. The best one was this one (although the girl liked “Friday Nights At Home (Alone)” better), but I couldn’t quite bring myself to finish it. I didn’t see an audience for it.

A few months later, I heard from ABCNews: they were doing a story on misophonia, and did I have a song I could give them? When I mentioned that I thought it would be whining into the wind to finish it, the producer raised the point that other misophones could probably use a song themselves, and that people who didn’t understand me might understand me better if I laid it all out for them. Made sense. I made the demo and sent it in.

They loved it, but ended up using a different person, who was willing to lock himself in a conference room with his best friend while he ate chips, to show a full-blown misophone tantrum as it steeped. Still, I had the song, and gave it to the groups to enjoy.

RECORDING

The doubling on the melody makes me feel like I’m listening to something Asian-influenced for some reason, but that wasn’t what I was going for at all — I was new to the song and out-of-practice on the riff, but I needed a quick turnaround, so I doubled the melody line with the lead guitar to make it ring clear. Probably won’t do that when I record it with Brandon, because it distracts me every time.

I had sequenced drums to this, but they were a bit much, so I stripped them away. The only embellishment I kept, really, was some strategically placed organ towards the end, to give the bridge a lift. I’m especially proud of one chord in the bridge that adds this extra bit of tension to the melody, a trick I’ve heard used a lot in modern R&B songs.

FALLOUT

Every open mic I’ve ever played this at has been amazing — singer-songwriters are both in envy and awe when one of us manages to bring a hard truth to the table, and the result is gratifying — and in smaller, more intimate audiences, I’ve found myself in some amazing, empathetic conversations. More than a few times, people have told me after hearing it that they think they might be misophones themselves, which is the point of a song like this: spreading awareness of the problem to the people who need to know about it the most.

The New Republic was kind enough to send me to the misophonia conference in Arizona, where I was invited to share my song not once, but twice. We shared a moment, the scientists, the other sufferers, and myself — the lump in my throat was beaten to the punch by all of the tears in the room — and I think we felt more like a community after the performance. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my career as a performing artist, and I’ve had some pretty great ones — there’s something about playing a song for its intended audience, at exactly the time that audience is prepared to welcome it into their experience. It’s amazing.

Anyhow, thank you for checking out my blog, and please feel free to download the demo and/or support the crowdfunding of my next album, which will definitely include this song as well. Hopefully you’ll find some other stuff you like listening to as well! I’m told by other misophones that my album “Here Goes Nothing” is trigger-free listening, and is even soothing in many parts. I hope you’ll agree!

Thanks,

Paul