Cacophony

A floating cacophony descended upon us. We were taken by surprise, even though naturally we'd heard it coming. We underestimated the damage its noise could do. We couldn't sleep, couldn't think, we didn't know ourselves. For anything to get heard we had to shout so loud whatever it was we had to say lost all elegance and dignity, became one with the cacophony. Everything was on its terms. Any attempts to drown it out merely added to it, and even if they had succeeded, what good would that do? We'd merely have exchanged one cacophony for an even greater one. What could we do? We moved on. It's not as if there were a shortage of places to go.
Though admittedly some seemed to find the cacophony to their liking, the relieving of a burden perhaps, not that they were aware of a burden to be relieved in the first place until the arrival of the cacophony, and with its arrival they were even more unlikely to be aware of it, and so our departure merely included those of us whose departure it actually included, rather than actually all of us.