A quiet place
Hard to find these days, some place in peaceful natural sounds are the only thing penetrating the calm of silence. Just outside an Adoration Chapel I just visited last evening, there was an open air rock festival going on down the street, the chapel windows were open, and it was a good test of how well one could find peace and contemplation even with noise blaring. I did, thanks be to God.
Joanna Bogle has penned a lively account of this cultural problem with noise creep….it’s everywhere these days….for the current MercatorNet newsletter. She writes about Britain, though it could be anywhere.
Today, we seem to be surrounded by interminable noise. Of course a lot of it can’t be helped — no one seems yet to have invented a silent car, much less a bus or lorry or aeroplane. Traffic roars past our ears all the time: people living near airports get special grants of money to have double-glazing fitted, and people living in busy streets pay for their own. We shout at one another as we walk along the street with cars roaring past, or wait in noisy bus stations. It’s part of life — the price we pay for the swift transport that has replaced the plod of a horse.
But a lot of noise is wholly avoidable. Some in the UK are dismayed at the trend among fellow Britons to turn their gardens, once spaces of reasonable peace, into “outdoor rooms” in which they cavort till all hours in summer…
My friend and colleague here, I want to point out, is quite a lively and funny and engaging character. She enjoys conversation and laughter and merriment which is all the more enjoyable when its balanced with a healthy dose of available silence, and she’s keen to point out that that’s less available out and about. Or anywhere…
Some people have a constant noise in their homes by keeping the television switched on all day. I do understand that it might be a sort of companionship for those who live alone — but what about busy families? How can they endure it? Their children then add pop music to the din while doing their homework.
Noise seems almost an addiction for some. Apple recently sold its 100 millionth iPod — one for every 65 people on the planet, and counting. People jogging, people sitting in trains, people at home, have sound being piped into their ears at a rate never known before in history, and at decibels that can reach the level of pneumatic drill. Two years ago the Royal National Institute for the Deaf reported that 43 per cent of young people admitted to turning the volume up too high, and the institute expressed concern about what this might be doing to young ears. Has its warning fallen on deaf ears?
Yes. I worked on a story for Time many years ago about the damage rock concerts and constantly blaring music was doing to the nerve endings in young people’s ears, and those I talked to laughed it off, even when informed that the ringing in their ears for about three days after a rock concert was from all those nerve endings dying off, never to be replaced.
There’s another toll it’s taking on us…
Because of the manufactured noise, people are noisier too. It’s now considered normal to shriek and yell in situations where, until comparatively recently, people would have got mildly annoyed or even laughed.
Have you noticed that? I sure have, especially on TV shows, and even news. It’s a loss of civility that has increased the pitch at which people are arguing with each other.
Oh, for some peace and quiet. In the silence, you can hear things that matter: birdsong on a country walk, water lapping when you are by a river, the wind in the trees — all those things that have always entranced and ought to be allowed to do so still, without being interrupted by the blare of pop from the couple ahead with their wretched radio.
Joanna writes this with incisive wit, by the way. And poignant insight.
And there’s more. Sometimes silence can make human contact easier. Once in the quiet of a cathedral, I heard some one weeping. A great silent church can be a good place in which to cry. I proffered a tissue, and some silent solidarity. If she wanted help, she knew she some one was there. And the silence wasn’t menacing – it swallowed up the human sounds of a sob or a whispered conversation, and placed them in a normal context.
I’m really glad Joanna wrote this. I’ve been wanting to make the point for a long time about the need for at least some quiet, and how strange the lack of sound can be to people constantly surrounded by it. I would have quoted philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s famous remark that if he could prescribe one thing to cure the ills of the modern world, it would be silence.