I think the banality would drive me mad in hours or minutes, like being bombarded nonstop by animated cartoons or being forced to spend my life listening to the conversations of people on public transportation. My own uninspired thoughts are tedious enough that I ignore at least half of them, but they have the virtue of being comfortably familiar, like the clutter in the bottom of my purse compared with the shock of glimpsing the interior of someone else’s purse.
Every now and then I would give a great deal for a clear view into my husband’s mind, which is so different from mine that sometimes we clash out of sheer alienness and arrive at frustrating impasses. But if the cost were to hear all the static that is broadcast constantly on all sides (and over unlimited distances, I would presume), nothing would induce me to try it for more than about twelve seconds’ satisfaction of curiosity.