My friend Rik Leaf babbles profoundly on his website:

Stupidity over Silence

There are times I wish I could just be alone, without my incessant chattiness.
Without all the stupid comments I make because I'm more comfortable with stupidity than silence. And I'm not the only incessantly chatty one. Everywhere I go someone is being interviewed about nothing, on a show about nothing, for an audience that expects nothing.

I guess it is the phenomenon of our day and age, we would rather suffer stupidity than silence.

"Someone say something!" (even if you have nothing to say.) Real bumper sticker philosophy.

In fact it's better if you don't have something to say. That way we don't have to think about what you've said. Just fill up the space, because space is too uninviting, too empty. Given too much time on our hands in the middle of silence we might actually be able to hear something, like ourselves and we've invested too much too let that happen.

The constant drone; like white noise. I knew a guy who sold these little boxes that strapped to a baby crib that produced white noise and simulated the movement of a car driving. It was supposed to help babies sleep. They sounded like pushers trying to get kids hooked on noise before they had a chance to hear silence for themselves.

These are the times I wish I was a painter instead of a singer.

Rik Leaf