MTA Confirms It Cannot Address Internal Cognitive Disturbances But Appreciates Him Raising The Issue
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Bronx Man Files Noise Complaint Against His Own Thoughts, Citing Excessive Mental Volume During Commute
NEW YORK — A Bronx resident named Marcus Delacroix-Hendricks filed a noise complaint Tuesday with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection alleging that his own internal monologue reaches volumes during his morning commute on the 4 train that constitute a violation of the city’s noise code, specifically the provision governing sustained noise above 85 decibels in public spaces.
The complaint, which Delacroix-Hendricks filed online using the DEP’s standard noise complaint portal, identifies the noise source as “internal cognitive activity, specifically recurring anxious thought patterns regarding work deadlines, apartment lease renewal, and an unresolved conversation with a colleague named Derek.” It identifies the affected location as “the interior of my own skull, primarily during the segment of the 4 train between 149th Street and Grand Central, approximately 38 minutes.”
The complaint requests that “the relevant authority take action to reduce the volume and frequency of the identified thoughts to a level consistent with ambient city noise standards, or at minimum to require the thoughts to comply with the city’s nighttime quiet hours between ten p.m. and seven a.m., which they currently do not.”
Delacroix-Hendricks told reporters he had filed the complaint “in good faith” after exhausting other options, including noise-canceling headphones (which, he noted, “address external noise but not the internal noise, which in some ways gets louder when the external noise is removed”), podcasts (which “compete with the thoughts for about twenty minutes and then lose”), and what he described as “just trying to think about something else,” which had not worked.
The DEP Response
The DEP responded to the complaint within forty-eight hours, which is, by the agency’s own performance standards, ahead of schedule. The response, a form letter with a hand-written addendum, confirmed receipt of the complaint, noted that the complaint had been “reviewed by our noise enforcement division,” and advised Delacroix-Hendricks that “the noise source identified in your complaint does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates external environmental noise rather than internal cognitive states.”
The hand-written addendum, which Delacroix-Hendricks shared with reporters, read: “We understand this may not be the response you were hoping for. We appreciate you raising the issue. The 311 mental health line may be a more appropriate resource. Also, regarding Derek: in our experience these conversations usually go better if you just have them.”
The authorship of the hand-written addendum is not known. Delacroix-Hendricks described it as “the most helpful thing any city agency has said to me in my seventeen years of living in New York.”
This kind of bureaucratic response that formally declines jurisdiction while offering genuine human guidance is consistent with a long tradition of government agency communications in which the official content of a letter and its human content coexist without quite merging.
The Derek Situation
Delacroix-Hendricks declined to discuss the Derek situation in detail, noting that it was “personal” and “still unresolved.” He confirmed that Derek was a colleague in the accounting department and that the unresolved conversation involved “a comment Derek made in a meeting that was either innocent or not innocent and I genuinely cannot tell which and this uncertainty is what is generating most of the volume.”
He said he had, since filing the noise complaint, also considered taking the DEP addendum’s advice and simply having the conversation with Derek. He had not yet done so. He said the decision to have or not have the conversation was “itself generating additional noise.”
The 4 Train Context
The 4 train, which runs from Woodlawn in the Bronx through Manhattan’s East Side and into Brooklyn, is, by its own noise profile, already one of the louder subway lines in the New York system. The external ambient noise inside the 4 train has been measured by transit researchers at between 80 and 102 decibels depending on the segment and the train’s condition. The paradox of a man filing a noise complaint about his own thoughts on one of the city’s louder subway lines is not one that the complaint or the DEP’s response addresses.
Delacroix-Hendricks acknowledged the paradox when it was raised. He said the external train noise was “fine” and that he had “made peace with it years ago.” The internal noise, he said, was “different in character and more persistent.” He described the internal noise as “opinion-based rather than structural, which makes it harder to accept.”
This is consistent with a wider observation about urban psychology in which habituated external noise is more manageable than novel internal noise, regardless of their respective decibel levels.
The Public Response
The complaint, which Delacroix-Hendricks posted on social media before the DEP responded, generated substantial engagement in New York circles. Several thousand people replied to say they recognized the specific phenomenon he was describing. Several hundred said they were considering filing similar complaints. One person said they had already filed a complaint about their own thoughts in 2019 but had “not pursued it when the DEP said no.”
A mental health advocate noted that the complaint, while procedurally misdirected, represented “a genuine expression of a real experience” and that the volume and persistence of anxious thoughts during commutes was “a documented phenomenon that affects a substantial number of New Yorkers and that deserves more systematic attention than a noise complaint portal, though the noise complaint portal is a creative approach.”
For more on New York urban psychology, see The Daily Mash for related British commuter mental health coverage.
Delacroix-Hendricks commutes on the 4 train every weekday. The thoughts continue at their current volume. He has not yet spoken to Derek.