Close To Being Right

I need to speak out, about an issue that many are too scared to mention.  A culture of silence has developed around it due to the stigma attached to talking about it.  However something has to change, I’m done with being quiet and it has to be said that when I go out I can’t hear shit.  Last weekend I went to hip-hop night in a bar and had to communicate with friends I hadn’t seen in weeks by leaning over and shouting in their ears and I still couldn’t  hear them speak when they shouted back into mine.   It made me very nervous when it looked like a mate was giving me the V until I realised he was signaling that he was going out for a smoke.  Surely its a stain on a night out when you have to communicate with your mates via sign language. 

The worse thing about this is the stigma attached to commenting on it.  The moment you complain about the music in a bar or a club being too loud you might as well draw a line under your youth and start reading the Daily Telegraph and going to bed at 8pm.   If you make a comment like that you automatically make yourself boring.  Its for this reason that nobody says anything, not to mention that nobody would fucking hear them if they did.  It happens because DJ’s have to validate themselves to differentiate their purpose from that of an ipod shuffle and they do that by imposing their myriad tunes as much as they possibly can, but its gone too far.   So far that we’re left in a world where I have to queue up for an overpriced drink to stand in front of friends I’m unable to communicate with, leaving me alone to contemplate the same boring thoughts that made me so desperate to go out in the first place. So we just stand there giving each-other reassuring smiles to remind us that we’re out and therefor not throwing away our youth. 

Obviously its my choice to walk into these bars and clubs in the first place, but what choice do I really have?   If I have to pick between this and spending Friday nights alone in my bedroom playing tetris I’ll go out just so that when I’m having a midlife crisis I can look back and convince myself that I at least tried to enjoy myself while I could, even if that means standing in a bar withstanding an assault on my eardrums while wishing that I was somehow able to be at home playing tetris.