Ssshhh....

The modern suburban environment is noisy. I am grateful for all that I have but I have become increasingly aware of noise. Domestic noise is one thing but if I spend a day in a city I am eager to get back to the freight train noises we hear at 5 am or even the traffic noise that drifts across the trees on two out of five days. My nerves are stretched by the persistent noises of the environment over which I have no control. Cars, jack hammers, machines, cell phones, voices, bells … the list is long. I find myself wanting to lean over to the couple at the table next to mine and yank their cell phones away from their reddened ears as they tell us who is doing what to whom and why and where and when and how! It is as if the world has become one gigantic yellow newspaper in which we are trapped. So we all get to hear that Sue is doing Bob who really cares for Melanie but won’t tell her because his mother, Kathy, is Melanie’s mother’s bff and she, Kathy you fool not Melanie, would have a fit if she thought that the perfect Sue was going to be replaced ….. Life has become a soap opera – or a really bad piece of ethnography in which I, and you, have become trapped.

Admit it you want to tell them to SHUT UP! Your hand twitches, your palms itch and you find yourself leaning sideways as you consider the distance you would have to sprint in order to escape into the human mass that is pressing itself through the tunnels of the mall after you have grabbed the phone and run like a middle aged hare through the crowds.

Then your phone rings/beeps/sings/gasps for air. You contemplate not answering it but perhaps it is Sam with an invitation to go out to dinner; or maybe it’s Apple with a suggestion that we all do the South Beach Diet for the next month; or May with an offer to baby-sit the kids so that you and yours can have a romantic evening; or it could be that one of your beloved has met with an accident … and of course if you don’t answer they will phone the police/your mother/your sister/brother/husband/daughter in order to find out why you are not answering your phone. Then speculation will run wild. Are you developing some sort of disorder that makes you go off on your own? Are you seeing some one you don’t want them to know about? Are you drinking alone at midday? Are you ill and seeing a doctor without telling anyone? Lost/kidnapped/injured/misplaced/mislaid/gone astray … oh my god it is five minutes since anyone spoke to you …. Call the police … track the cell … Oh there you are in the library where you were asked to put your phone on mute – those people are from the dark ages, who goes a minute without being in touch with some one somewhere?

If we want silence we are seen to be isolating ourselves instead of finding ourselves. In a world besotted with doing things so that we have bragging rights over everything we do all day, and night, long, time spent alone appears to give others the impression that we are antisocial and inconsiderate of others needs (demands). Not wanting to, or indeed desiring to, talk about everything one has said, done or thought over a twenty four hour period makes others nervous. I wonder if we have become the kids who hid under the bedclothes with a torch afraid of every bit of silence that we hear. The cacophony has reached a level where time spent alone has become filled with noise. The boogie man is not the monster that lurks in the cupboard but rather the black screen of the cell phone you forgot to charge.

I listened to an interview on NPR last week in which the author George Prochnik discussed his book “In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise”. It was an interesting discussion about silence and our apparent abhorrence of it in the 21st century. As I listened I was reminded how my father would come home from a day at the office and go straight into the orchard. After about an hour he would emerge able to spend time with his family. He taught me not to be afraid of silence but to cherish it. As I grew up I discovered that sitting in an orchard at the bottom of a garden in the dusk was a good time and place to find peace and quiet. It was there that I made important decisions that affected the next day, or week and indeed my life. Alone among the trees with the darkening sky I established a custom that has lasted my entire life.

My family considers me inconsiderate when I switch off or silence my cell phone. I consider it an invaluable part of my day. I don’t want to escape my life. I have no desire to be other than where I am or who I am but I do request that I be permitted my sixty minutes of solitude with my eyes wide open so that I may pause and remind myself that this is a good place and time to day dream, ponder, theorise, pause or merely eat my ice cream cone by sucking it out of the bottom of the cone without any comments.

We all deserve a chance to listen for meaning in our world of noise.