Can you hear the hum?

Listening for constancy in all the chaos.

Listen to the post read by Jo. or read below. This piece discusses incest abuse. If you’re a survivor or supporter seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.

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A new friend from an old place held my hand and pushed his much-taller-than-mine body through the crowds of Times Square, so that my nearly one-foot-shorter-self could literally ride his wake in the chaos of sounds, and screens, and stores.

“Do you want to experience my favorite public art installation?”

He turned to scream, so I could hear him above the voices, but we were already on our way, and I didn’t dare let go of his hand or his strong sense of direction while navigating the stampede of feet that I feared could crush me.

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I communicated my consent with a squeeze of his hand and continued to follow right on the edge of his heels. Then we arrived. We stood on a large metal grate that led somewhere mysteriously into New York’s underground life. He turned toward me, placed his hands on my shoulders gently, and asked:

“Do you hear it?”

I heard so many things. Honking horns, and chatting passersby, and music pumping from the petty carts pushing through the people.

“Do I hear what?” I replied genuinely confused.

“The hum,” he answered.

I did not hear a hum, but trusted that I could if I only listened. My friend’s hands continued to stabilize me in the currents of lights, and music, and tourists, while I closed my eyes to focus my mind on this subtle sound I was supposed to hear. Then I did.

A sweet and swirling vibration. A consistent pitch. A soft whistle.

“I hear it.” I said smiling. My friend then turned me around to face the rhythms of life pumping through the veins of this city.

“Open your eyes and listen.” His hands remained on the sides of my shoulders, but he stood behind me now.

The lids of my eyes hesitantly lifted, afraid I might lose my connection to the sound. As I faced a flashing screen advertising the next hot commodity in front of me, the newest broadway show to grace the stage to the left, or the branding of some restaurant chain that can be found in similar places around the United States, I held onto the hum. I felt the pressure of the love of this friend’s hands holding my body.

And it was as if he, and I, and the sound existed as a trinity in slow motion, while the world rushed around us, blurring the lines of all that moved on the outside, while intensely focusing my senses on just those three things: that hum, his hands, and the constancy of both in the midst of this chaos.

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In 1977, Max Neuhaus installed the musical pitch in this metal grate underground to see if anyone would notice it. There is no sign to alert passersby of its presence. People rush past it all the time. Distracted by the consumerism and commotion, the entertainment and the energy, they do what I would’ve done: they miss the hum.

The meaning of this moment felt miraculous just weeks before the man accused of sexual harassment by at least 26 women took back the White House and placed more people who have harmed in cabinet positions. On November 6, 2024, my soul leapt beyond my body just like it did in 2016, just like it did the first time I was raped by members of my own family.

“I’m not safe,” my being grieved once again as a rapist was now the head of one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

It’s only been six days since the inauguration and the chaos has already begun. With the pardoning of people who planned an insurrection, with Executive Orders against the sustainability of the earth and the diversity of its genders, with raids that seek to separate our neighbors in need of safety from those who have the privileges of citizenship or light-enough-to-pass-as-white skin. The conservative currents on the outside activate the deep sensitivities of my insides, as I grieve for the lost progress of labors of love by those of us who want to live in harmony.

And in my activated state, I do what I’ve learned to: focus. My mind and body return me to that memory with my friend, Gregory, in Times Square. With his hands on my shoulders, and that constant hum that only we could hear because we knew that — one, it existed there, and two, how to listen to its sound. When the world and so much of my body loses itself in flashing spectacles, and the threats of hierarchy, and the abuses of bodies who never learned to — one, keep their hands to themselves, or two, to share — I return there.

To the litany of love guiding me by hand through the sounds into a space where I can hear its thrum, the pressure of the presence of a people who help me to balance in the crowds, and the truth that this installation is just as constant as the chaos. So I listen.

In my day to day, I hear the hum of liberation asking me to focus my attention, the presence of friends standing alongside me, and the memory of the moment when I learned how to tune out the chaos while tuning into the sounds of serenity.

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So I stay there in my memory, hoping that the oddity of these two people standing still in the center of a metal grate in the middle of everyone moving in Times Square — hands on each other's hands, staring at the lights, just listening — might begin to draw a crowd. A passerby might slow down enough to ask:

“What are you doing?”

“Can you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The hum.”

Then they, as I had just done, still themselves and stand there. As I place my hands on their shoulders, they too learn to listen.

“I hear it!”

And the two of us are now three, and maybe one day we will be four, then five, then six, then the majority of people who choose to be together, present. Simply listening for the subtle hum of love in the noisy mess of this existence.

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