Tune Out the Static

The world’s gone to static.

Not the soft kind you used to hear when you’d fall asleep with the TV still on, back when the night signed off with the national anthem and a test pattern. No, this is the sharp kind. It's the white-hot hiss of everyone talking at once, no filter, no pause, just endless commentary all jostling for space in your skull. It’s like spinning the dial on an old radio, hoping to catch a familiar voice, but all you get is preachers, politicians, podcasters, and pundits, each one louder than the last, each one swearing they’ve got the signal.

But every now and then, between the bursts of noise, something flickers. Not a voice exactly. More like a feeling. It's like the old tube’s about to warm up and show you something you weren’t meant to see. It never lasts long. Blink, and it’s gone. But once it’s happened, you can’t shake the sense that something’s there. And if you’ve got the stomach for it... maybe it’s worth chasing.

That’s the case I’m working this week.
Not a murder. Not a missing person.
Something harder to track.
Harder to name.

CLUE 1: The Channel That Can Be Tuned Is Not the Eternal Broadcast

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The old radios used to hiss before they spoke. You’d turn the dial slowly, careful not to blow past the frequency. Static, a burst of voice, static again. And if you were lucky—patient, even—a signal would cut through. Not always clear. Not always loud. But there.

The Tao is like that. Slippery. Mysterious. The moment you think you’ve caught it—named it, defined it, packaged it—it fades. Like a dream you try too hard to remember. The opening lines of Chapter 1 are not a riddle to be solved; they’re a warning label. “This won’t behave the way you want it to.”

There’s the Tao as it exists in stillness—the nameless, the unseen, the eternal hum behind everything. And then there’s the Tao as it appears in form—the named, the shaped, the ten thousand things. That’s us: names, thoughts, roles, inboxes, ambitions. All spinning off from the moment we tried to hold stillness in our hands.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

This isn’t about good vs. bad, pure vs. corrupt. It’s not saying the named is wrong. After all, names give rise to poetry and love letters and soup recipes. But the named obscures. It distracts. And if you stay too long in the world of form, you forget there's something deeper humming underneath it all.

Ever try to meditate and instead end up mentally rearranging furniture or reliving an awkward conversation from eighth grade? That’s the named, hard at work. The ego doesn’t go quietly. But that silence beneath all your mental static? That’s the signal. That’s the Tao.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

Desire is what pulls us into the static. Wanting to understand. Wanting to control. Wanting to find a frequency that makes sense. In Buddhism, this wanting (tanhā) is the root of suffering. The path, they say, is to extinguish it like a candle’s flame. No desire, no attachment, no suffering. And that’s a path, sure. A powerful one. But Taoism doesn’t try to snuff the flame. It just says, “Notice the fire. Don’t burn yourself.” Desire isn’t wrong. It’s part of the pattern. It creates motion. Story. Meaning. It gives rise to the named world. So we don’t reject it. We just stay aware of it. And every now and then, we step back, just far enough, to hear what else might be playing beneath the noise.

These two have the same source, but differ in name.
This appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

You get the sense, reading it, that you’re being led to a door that only opens when you stop trying to open it. Not because it’s locked. Just because it was never meant to be forced. And maybe the signal’s out there, still humming. But for now, the dial keeps turning.

CLUE 2: The Signal Comes Through in Fragments

There’s a particular kind of noise that comes with religion. Not the kind made by bells or choirs or chanting. Those can be beautiful. No, it’s the static that hums beneath every sermon that swears it has the only truth. That particular frequency that insists everyone else is wrong, lost, damned, or deceived. You don’t notice it at first, not if you were born into it. It hums along like refrigerator noise, part of the room, part of you.

But when you finally walk away, when you switch the dial or turn down the volume, you hear something strange.

Silence.

And then… something else.

Not condemnation. Not hellfire. Just other voices. Gentle ones. Curious ones. Some in Sanskrit. Some in Arabic. Some in Aramaic. Each one offering its own thread. And suddenly, the world becomes a garden instead of a prison yard. You realise you were never meant to pick just one flower and throw the rest away.

The fundamentalists will call it syncretism like it’s a sin. A contamination. But the mystics knew better. They always have. Perennialism isn’t theft. It’s remembrance. It’s recognising that beneath the robes, the rituals, and the rigid creeds, there is a single thread pulling us all toward the same stillness. The same mystery. The same Tao.

Deconstruction doesn’t mean destruction. It means taking something apart so you can see how it was built. And once you see the scaffolding, you can step outside the house without burning it down. You can honour the walls that once gave you shelter, even as you walk barefoot into something wider.

And maybe that’s when you start to hear it. The low, steady pulse beneath the noise. A whisper from Rumi. A line from Psalms. A breath from the Buddha. Even the carpenter from Nazareth gets a line in, if you're quiet enough to catch it.

They’re all humming the same tune.

And maybe, just maybe, if you listen closely enough, you’ll find you already know the words.

CLUE 3: The Rewrite is Where the Truth Bleeds Through

Writing’s a strange business. You start out thinking you’re the one in control. That you’ve got the blueprint. The case files. The suspects. But somewhere along the line, the story pulls a gun on you and says, “We’re doing it my way.”

Nick Grayson: The Truth in the Lies is still out there, pounding pavement and solving problems most people would rather keep buried. But the next case is already on my desk. Pure Evil. First draft’s done. Red pen’s uncapped. And the fog is rolling in.

Rewriting is like working a cold case. You start finding things you missed. Motives that don’t hold up. Scenes that looked good under the neon light, but fall apart in the morning sun. I had a whole subplot once—Nick’s client was gay, and it triggered something deep in Nick. Old trauma. Shadows from the past. It worked in my head, but somewhere between page sixty and seventy, it stopped breathing. It didn’t belong. Not yet. Not here.

Lisa, though. She’s always been full of surprises. Smart, sharp, rough around the edges. Somewhere along the way, she started exploring something more than just the case. There’s another woman in the picture. Jasmine. At first, I wrote them hot. Too hot. Steamier than a noir should be. I thought the heat would make the moment real. But I’m learning the opposite is true.

You want to know what makes a scene electric? Restraint. Space. What you don’t show. What you don’t say. The real power is in the pause. In the breath that almost turns into a kiss. In the look that lingers too long in the rearview mirror.

Noir doesn’t do smut. Noir does suggestion. It lets the reader lean in. Let them fill in the dark corners with whatever haunts them most.

So now I’m pulling back. Sharpening. The plot’s about more than sex. It’s about lies dressed up as loyalty. It’s about embezzlement and multi-level marketing scams. About murder and memory. About how sometimes the ugliest evil wears the prettiest mask.

The writing process is messy. You lose your way, double back, throw out scenes that cost you sleep. But if you keep at it long enough, if you’re willing to bleed a little on the page, something starts to take shape.

And if you’re lucky? It tells you the truth.

CLUE 4: The Silence Between the Slogans

Politics used to feel like a war you had to pick a side in. Like if you weren’t waving a flag, you were already losing. But somewhere along the line, the slogans started sounding the same. The cheers too loud, too rehearsed. The anger too predictable. You start to wonder if anyone’s actually listening anymore, or if we’re all just shouting into the static, hoping our side wins the last word.

That’s when I stepped back. Not out of apathy. Not because I don’t care. But because the view is clearer from the edge.

The Political Nomad doesn’t boo. Doesn’t cheer. He watches. He listens. He feels things others miss because he’s not waiting to be told what matters. He’s not hooked into the headline cycle like it’s an IV drip. He doesn’t need the right mascot in office to hope for peace. And when something good happens, something genuinely good, he doesn’t check what colour tie the diplomat wore before he smiles.

Maybe that makes him naïve. Maybe it makes him dangerous. But it also makes him free.

See, when you tune out the tribal noise, you start to hear something else. A ceasefire here. A treaty signed there. Countries shaking hands that, months ago, were trading bombs. No one’s screaming about it on your feed, but it happened. And if your hope isn’t tied to a political party like a dog on a leash, you’re allowed to feel it. You’re allowed to celebrate peace without being accused of betrayal.

You’re allowed to hope.

The Nomad doesn’t expect perfection. He’s seen too much for that. But he’s still got room in his coat pocket for miracles. Quiet ones. The kind that slip through when no one’s looking. The kind that don’t need a campaign slogan to mean something.

And every now and then, when the shouting fades and the signal comes through, he smiles.

Not because one side won.

But because, for a moment, nobody had to lose.

CLUE 5: The Space Between the Noise

You don’t have to live in a cave to find stillness. You don’t need a Tibetan passport, a guru, or a burning bundle of sage. Sometimes, all it takes is ten minutes and the courage to sit with yourself. That’s the offer Andy Puddicombe makes in The Headspace Guide to Meditation & Mindfulness.

It’s not lofty. It’s not esoteric. It’s simple, but not shallow. Practical, but not clinical. Andy takes something ancient and makes it human again. Not because he waters it down, but because he understands that most of us don’t need enlightenment. We just need a little peace.

His story helps. The man was a Buddhist monk before he became a meditation teacher. He lived it. Then he came back to the rest of us, shaved head and soft voice, saying things like, “Just notice the breath.” And you do. Not because you’re trying to become someone else, but because, for once, nobody’s asking you to try at all.

What struck me most is how he treats the mind like weather. Thoughts come. Thoughts go. You’re not the storm. You’re the sky. It’s not about silencing the noise. It’s about recognising that the noise isn’t all there is.

He doesn’t ask you to fight your thinking. He just invites you to step back far enough to see it. And in that space—between the distractions, beneath the internal chatter—something shifts. Not dramatically. Not with fireworks. Just enough.

Enough to catch the signal.

This book doesn’t promise transcendence. It promises presence. That might not sound like much, but when you’re drowning in static, presence is gold. It’s the moment you turn the dial and realise you’ve been listening to the wrong station all along.

And there, in the stillness, you finally hear it.

Not a voice. Not an answer.

Just... quiet.

Case Closed

You’ve followed the clues. The Tao whispering beneath thought. The sacred thread hidden in a thousand faiths. A PI chasing shadows and cutting scenes that once seemed essential. A man in the stands who smiles when nobody’s keeping score. And a bald-headed monk reminding us that clouds pass, but the sky stays.

Maybe all of it was pointing to something.

Maybe not.

But here's what I’ve come to believe:

Sometimes, the only way to see the truth is to stop squinting. Let the fog roll in. Let the static buzz. Let the voices clash and fade. You don’t have to silence them. You don’t even have to solve them. You just have to stop trying so hard to make meaning and instead... let meaning make you.

Be still.

Because in that stillness, something begins to take shape.

It’s not loud. It’s not branded. It doesn’t have a subscriber count or a ten-step guarantee. But it’s there. And once you feel it, you can’t forget it.

That’s what my next project is about. A course, yes—but not the snake-oil kind. No promises of manifesting a sports car by Tuesday. This is a Taoist take on the Law of Attraction. Something slower. Truer. A guide to prosperity that’s rooted in reality and mystery both. It’s still forming, still humming below the surface. But I’m working on it. Quietly. Carefully. For those who want more than empty affirmations. For those who want to listen between the noise.

Until then, stay curious. Stay soft. Tune out the static when you can. And trust that, somewhere beneath it all, the signal is still playing.

You just have to be still enough to hear it.

Peace, and keep asking the big questions,

The Sage Wanderer