By dusk the city’s usual soundtrack had become a stage direction where actors forgot their lines. Sirens flared in bulbous light and were merely color; horns flashed but did not push. Those who could not rely on hearing moved with the practiced, wrong certainty of those who had learned to trust other senses. They read faces, watched vibrations on windows, felt the beat of a streetlamp through the soles of their shoes.
: Refers to a figure—perhaps a partner or society at large—who is so absorbed in the digital or internal world that the surrounding human reality becomes inaudible. Carmela Clutch - He Cant Hear Us -10.23.21-