Speak Our Consciences in a Soft, Sharp Whisper

(Previously: Speak of it Only in a Soft, Sharp Whisper (September 2012), and Speak of it in a Soft, Sharp Whisper Some More (August 2013))

Two passing thoughts on the subject of meridian, or "ASMR", before I get to the meat of what's in my mind:

• I have never been terribly keen on describing the feeling of meridian as a "tingle". "Tingle", in my mind, suggests a sort of neutrally extraneous sensation — something like the strongly minty, lingering taste in one's mouth after using a good mouthwash. Meridian, I think, is better described as a euphoric PULSE or spasm. But, I suppose a two-word, four-or-five-syllable phrase is a bit awkward in casual conversation and YouTube comments, isn't it.....

• Although the sensation is more easily triggered on my right side — that is to say, the right side of my back, usually — it tends to be more strongly felt on the left side, once the left ear has heard enough for the sensation to sort of "break through". I guess my left needs to be "primed" a moment before it kicks into full gear. If the "video" to which I've meristurbated (for those who missed it in part two, link above, this original word means "indulged in meridian") has been sufficiently effective, I'll sometimes be unable to fully lean back into my chair without the euphoria in my left mid-lower back asserting itself, a full minute or two after the video has finished. Somehow, my right prefers it quick and immediate; it's yet to linger post-trigger the way it does on the left.

Now, then...

There's a quality, or a trend, I've noticed of late in my lonely, after-hours meridian pursuits, and it rather ties in with my personal politics, which I've revealed on this blog on a number of occasions. It is this: the videos that I'm finding provide the strongest and most effective triggers, and therefore the videos I'm pursuing and "favoriting", are the ones that are crystal clear and unfiltered — breaths go directly in the ear, so strongly that I can practically smell the ASMRtist's breath. Also, I can easily hear and know when they are moving from one ear to the other; they're not just staying totally in one place while they deliver a line or two.

Summarily: The videos that best simulate an actual person being with me, the viewer/listener, are the best.

Try this one on for sighs (sic). (Embedding disabled by request: Air Light - Inaudible, unintelligible binaural whisper 3D)

Despite the Zappa-esque artistic style where different recorded bits are repeated and overdubbed throughout the piece (Zappa's "Freak Out" especially comes to mind on the grounds that I get meridian off "It Can't Happen Here", which has an up-close backup vocal in the right channel; "No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no, man you guys are gonna be SAFE, everything's COOL."), it is delightfully obvious that the recordings are done by an actual human being. (Not that some ASMRtists aren't human, mind you.) She audibly moves from directly in one ear, to more the back of the neck, closer back to the ear, then to the other ear, and so on. I smell her breath at certain junctures with P and K sounds; as poorly as our language puts names to scents, her breath is simply authentically human — not wholly foul, nor quite the aroma of a good meal freshly prepared in the kitchen — just simply human. Perhaps I remember the smell from somewhere in my past — a casual, unmemorable encounter in my far too numerous days of academia wherein I was in enough distance of a young girl speaking to catch a whiff. It's lively. And real. The combination of humanity, artistic endeavor, and, of course, super-effective meridian triggers, make this quite probably my all-time favorite "merideo" (ASMR video).

And so my political side flares up. Where are all the people in my life who would be willing to speak to me so intimately and closely? Our culture doesn't quite encourage that, does it? Occasionally, somewhat rarely, I feel meridian wholly by accident when being spoken to normally from about arm's length, as happened while I was receiving instruction on working with produce on the opening day of the discount grocery at which I'm working for about three more weeks until I move to greater Nashville. How did I manage to feel meridian in a joyous, happening atmosphere like that of a store's grand opening? I don't know. But, anomalies like that aside, nobody's exactly going out of their way to be in an intimate setting and tone with me, are they? And it's totally weird and un-American to sort of "nudge" anyone in that direction. Ideal meridian conditions do tend to lean toward the same kind of conditions that are often reserved for romantic endeavors — two people otherwise alone, in a close, quiet space. If I've ever been part of anyone's romantic endeavors, they have failed to tell me about it in all my nearly twenty-eight earth years.

I'm reminded all over again of how I'm completely alone and how our society seems to encourage that kind of thing. Get a steady job sitting at a desk all day. Drive to and from that job — the lone occupant in your vehicle. Squabble with your spouse, kids and parents at home; your connection is purely biological. Modern western culture, with all its endless flavors, passing technology and varieties, has pretty much fragmented us as people. We see too many differences between each of us for us to overcome them, and we don't make good connections anymore. At best, I get generally friendly people giving generally friendly greetings and offers on which they'll never follow through. We're just going through the motions, cogs in the machine, our teeth slowly eroding.

I wonder about the lives of the ASMRtists. The ASMRtist ranks are pretty well dominated by women — just an occasional male along the way — making videos in their own rooms or studios, with only themselves in them. What kind of families do they have? Are they romantically involved with anyone? They most all seem like they could easily sway a mate or two from the crowd, such kindly faces with sweet, soft voices. Do they often get to experience an actual live-action trigger from a human being in the same room? Will I get to meet anybody like this? ASMRtists are spread all over the globe. Air Light, who undoubtedly knows and understands the basic mechanics of meridian, is......Ukrainian, I believe....? I follow people in Russia, Deutschland, the UK, Australia, and probably some Americans, although that doesn't exactly narrow anything down. Is anyone near Nashville? Meet for a malt at Mike's some time?

I'm a lonely meridiot—
fringe and unfocused
a random poet
a runaway train
without a platform
a purple square
on a Rubik's Cube
a round peg
on an unstrung guitar
I got a
        way with words
a cat
      burglar
in an open desert
I adapt to survive
but can I live?

Um.......what the hell just happened to me? All right, yeah. So, I think I may attempt to produce a piece of ASMRtwork for YouTube. I may just read this series of blog posts. My microphone is horribly cheap — and naked. Listen for breaths that pierce. And hopefully trigger. (I have, in the past, gotten meridian from my own voice on "Thirst (Ambrosia)". Is this okay?)

Swell Saturday, cyber citizens,
~C.A., from Chicago~

Speak of it in a Soft, Sharp Whisper Some More

Good luck with this post. Certain amount of made-up language here. And that may be the least of my problems....

A while back, I took perhaps something of a risk and posted publicly about a most bizarre, possibly genetic, and delightfully euphoric phenomenon for anyone who, like me, gets it. What follows is just sort of an improvised disorganization of some further thoughts on the topic of what the 'Net has come to call "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response", or ASMR. I just call it "meridian" myself, except on Twitter, whose format makes "#ASMR" advantageous. "Meridian" just sounds better than "a-ess-em-arr", doesn't it? Rolls off the tongue better, certainly.

One so-called "ASMRtist" came to follow me on the blue bird network. This is not someone whose work I had encountered previously, but unlike many people, most of whom follow me and then unfollow me a couple days later, she had the courtesy to respond when I sent her a greeting. (That's what I do when I gain a follower; I warmly greet them. I have thirty-six followers. I know the most recent one won't stay; they've not acknowledged my three-and-a-half-day-old greeting. Why do I keep getting sidetracked into people being anti-social on social networks? Ah, well...) Therefore, I took her to be someone worth investigating. I plugged in and donned my headphones, brought up her 'Tube channel, picked out a video that looked like my audio realm, and put it on.



Just short of 43 minutes. (By the way, I usually just listen to these meridian videos while they play and I look at other tabs. It's all about the audio; no reason to just sit here watching 'em. Eyes can be otherwise engaged all the while.) Maybe some gamers are actually paying wide-eyed attention to this material; an attractive, young female is whispering about their favorite thing! And that's fine; I will wholeheartedly grant that. But I do feel a need to say this: The meridian is quite strongly triggered in the beginning. However, as the video plays on, the effect diminishes, and by the half-hour mark, due either to natural exhaustion of whatever it is off which the meridian feeds, or to my own mind drifting into 2012 Appalachia or 13,291 Mediterranea and therefore away from the video audio, the meridian has gone for the moment, leaving only a sort of ambient audio piece I'm hearing, featuring whispers and the occasional click of a button or other item. Of course, ambiance can still be soothing in the more traditional sense; it's soft and gentle and capable of comfort. But the meridian, the supernatural euphoria darting yet beyond the reach of our human comprehension, has fled, to return another time soon.

A number of patrons of YouTube's "ASMarts" have chimed in with comments of gratitude, some claiming that the videos help put them to sleep. This is an interesting idea. The meridian-less, soothing ambiance that the, uh, "muggle" (unfortunate soul who doesn't get meridian) would get from the experience of listening to whispering (or tapping/crinkling/etc.) could certainly serve as a lullaby of sorts. (I just realized, a "lullaby" is "a" thing "by" which to "lull" to relative sedation. Ha ha.) But does meridian, when it happens, come with the standard hormones that could calm the person to sleep? In my high school, we had a choice between either physics or anatomy; I went with physics, so I'm kind of making things up about anatomy. But despite fairly frequently emerging from meridian indulgence (maybe there should be a word for "indulging in meridian", the way we have "masturbate" for "indulge in the pursuit of sexual orgasm"; "meristurbating"?) without feeling the least notable bit sleepier than before I clicked ►, I do have to wonder if the non-sexual upper-body euphoria is related to similar .....dopamine?.....releases within the body as with the traditional sexual orgasm. With traditional sexual orgasms, I usually — but not always! — do feel rather sleepy in the immediate aftermath. Or maybe that's because I tend to masturbate in bed, right before I'm aiming to sleep anyway, so it could be a bit skewed.* No, I still recall feeling sleepy in class during high school when having my private, hands-free sub-orgasm sexual euphoriae in my pants. Then again, why wouldn't I have been sleepy in class? Damn thing started at eight in the morning every friggin' weekday.

Meridian really does need some actual scientific studies. Control groups! Muggles and ....non-muggles. (Did we decide on a name for people who get meridian? I don't know.) Male and female. Young and old. Times of day. Intervals between meridian indulgences. See if there's a correlation between non-mugglehood and certain other selective genetic traits. Can non-muggles generally also wiggle their ears, or curl their tongue into a U? I can tell you that for me, just as I tend to feel meridian more strongly on the right than the left, so I am also better at wiggling my right ear than my left. My tongue curls nicely when so driven, and, for some reason, while I am right-handed, my left hand does the better "live long and prosper". And, I think we gotta compare personality types across the board. Are non-muggles ("meridianists"? "meridiots"? Help!) generally less violent than their unfortunate counterparts? You know, make orgasms, not war? Ahhh.....

Meridian needs scientific studies — if we can turn enough people on to the idea that the phenomenon exists. The very idea of it is still rather emerging, ever gradually, from our digitally collected conscience and risking making muggles bitter and angry. It ain't made its way into too many renowned publications, but I think it is, ever gradually, as I say, gaining momentum. Some of the 'Tube meridian community, according to one of the other videos on Donna's account, have evidently collaborated to produce a documentary about it. I recognized in that video one particular "ASMRtist" ⒜ whom I take to be the ambassador of meridian and its community to the world, and ⒝ whose videos I've most certainly enjoyed the most (often) since I discovered this whole technological revolution on the matter. I'll embed one of hers here: simple speaking and stereo close-up ear-to-ear whispers — in Russian, because, as with the German above, it's chock full of consonants, and the content of the words is like the points on Whose Line — it doesn't matter one bit. Also, it's significantly shorter than the above, at a mere 12.24. (Again, headphones are essential!)



Nobody so far triggers my left side like Maria. (Sounds like an old song, right there.)

Trying to think if there was more I wanted to say now while I'm on this topic. I can't stand reality television, but my mother gladly watches Big Brother, among other atrocities. I haven't talked at all explicitly aloud about meridian, but I did mention to Mom as I was passing through: "The one good thing about Big Brother is, sometimes they whisper." "What? What does that have to do with anything?" "I like whispering. Whispering is good. It's soothing." "[shakes head] That's one of the weirdest things you've said! You've said a lot of weird things, but this is one of the weirdest!" Yes, perhaps it is. Probably because, although I'm not about to listen to a Big Brother marathon with headphones (I know I said content doesn't matter, but please...), I have one of the weirdest phenomena in mind.



P.S. I wonder how I would react to an actual person whispering directly to me. Maybe....some day.....



Edit 2014-5-3: A third meridian post



*While there is no apparent sexual connection to meridian, I will often get one single meridian-style euphoric SHOT down my right side while I'm in bed and have just turned on to my side for sleep after sexually masturbating to climax. Actually, I'll sometimes run my thumbnails against the pillow and blanket right up by either ear while I'm in bed and "meristurbate" that way.

Speak of it Only in a Soft, Sharp Whisper

Here's something no one ever seemed to talk about, even though it's totally a thing. I guess no one ever talked about it because it wasn't a universal thing, but it's a thing nonetheless. I've long known this thing from a handful of records, from people whispering around me in classes, and from other sources that escape me just now. Somehow, I never thought to mention it to anybody. Never thought to look it up on the net, either. Certainly never thought to give it a proper name. I just kind of enjoyed it when it happened and thought nothing more of it.

Then earlier this week, a cyberfriend of mine posted a link to an article. The article seemed to think it was talking about my thing, but I'm certain it was actually pursuing something different. But it was enough. For the first time, it was evident that a handful of people out there know the thing and are reasonably excited to talk about it. Even if the article missed the mark, it had plenty of links and references to people who didn't. All the while I was off in my own little world, other people were uniting theirs into one growing, marvelous globe. They even decided upon a name, albeit a clinical one that translates into an unmemorable set of initials.

The name is: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. ASMR for short. And what it is — are you ready for this? No you're not. Unless you've experienced it, in which case I retract that statement. What it is, basically, is this: A sort of upper-body orgasm induced by intimate, yet sharp, sounds. The best example of such a sound that comes to mind is a really close-up whisper on a quiet background, full of well-enunciated Ts and Ss. Sometimes and somehow, those sounds just perfectly hit something within my head, resulting in, at least in my case, a kind of flash-orgasm shooting from near my inner ear down into my upper back, usually on the right side near my shoulder.

I should add that I seem to need to be relaxed for it to happen. If I'm too tense, and given my current life situation, that does happen often, the tension seems to kind of block the sounds from getting through to the "sweet spot". So relaxation is a good thing to have. (When isn't it?)

So there you have it. Apparently, not everyone gets that. But there are plenty of people that do, and they are gradually emerging from the deepest recesses of the Internet (which happen to include YouTube and *ahem* Blogger). And, for whatever it may be worth, I'm happy to join them. This is why I was so stunningly tolerant of classmates whispering around me during class, back when I was actually an enthusiastic student eager to do well. Ah, that seems so long ago now.

This is not the original article to which my friend linked. But it's as good an information repository on the matter as we're likely to find at this point. There is supposedly an official research website, but it hasn't worked since I stumbled upon all this. And there are plenty of other links within this article.

But you know I can't just leave you hanging. I have to provide at least a couple of examples of my own "triggers". I'll start you with psychedelic pstaple Syd Barrett and his old band. Isn'T iT goooooD?



Next up, the acid folk stylings of Linda Perhacs. This demo appears on the expanded CD reissue of her classic 1970 LP Parallelograms. Listen in particular for the middle part with the right-channel-dubbed vocal.



I'll leave you with those two for now. YouTube can only do so much. (I have an mp3 copy of, of all things, Johnny Mathis' "Chances Are" where Johnny's voice is astonishingly crisp in the right channel. I don't think the 'Tube can match it.) And anyway, "chances are", we wouldn't want to overdose on these "back-gasms". Everything in moderation; always remember that.

Peace, love, and limited quantities of euphoria,
~C.A.~



Edit 2013-8-24: Further thoughts on this phenomenon here.