The Sounds of Silence

Interesting comments on a book by Sarah Maitland, The Book of Silence, from Jesse Crispin. It's mostly a diatribe against technological doomsayers, those convinced that our reliance on technology is the work of the devil, but this sparked a thought:

Maitland believes that our culture hates silence. We fear it, despise it, do anything to avoid it. Maitland moved to rural England in order to escape the noise of her city life, and in her book she examines the experience of silence and isolation, both voluntary and involuntary. She rather overstates her case, honestly. Anyone who lives in a city does not fear silence. They crave it, wish for it when the train rumbles by every 15 minutes all night long, or when the neighbor you're afraid of turns on the death metal until your apartment floor vibrates. She points to our constant noise-making as proof of our fear, but I think her examples are just our attempts to make the sounds around us friendlier. An iPod full of our favorite music is greatly preferred over random subway rumble and chatter, and texting or phoning your dearest is preferred over a roomful of strangers' conversation.

As you might imagine, I have a slightly different take. I treasure silence, I really do, and when I'm not forced to interact with people, I'm largely silent myself. But it's a sometime thing. Two points: I do not own a cell phone or an iPod, nor do I travel "plugged in." And I had a heavy dose of John Cage in my formative years (which actually don't seem to have ended yet). I like the sounds of the city, unless I have to focus on something else -- sometimes, when I'm writing, I need silence; other times, I need music, which seems to help my concentration. I hate noise, but "noise" itself is a subjective term. I remember lying in bed one summer night listening to my window fan and the way it intersected both the random street noises outside my window and the cycling of someone else's airconditioner. It made a nice lullaby.

Questions of technology aside -- I don't see it as either evil or good, but pretty much as value neutral -- I like to stay open to what's going on around me. In the city, that includes the noise of human activity (which includes our machines: they are ours, after all, and operating under our supervision, one hopes). In the country, it's the sounds of "natural" life. (Anyone who's ever been in the country for any length of time knows that it's not quiet. It's just that the sounds are of a different type, and governed by different requirements. I've been in the North Carolina mountains in summer, when the calls of frogs are almost deafening, and inescapable. That's hardly "silence.")

And when it comes right down to it, you make your own silence, if you can stand it. I think Maitland is misidentifying the noise factor, and Crispin doesn't spot it: there are people who hate silence, but they also are probably people who don't spend a lot of time thinking to begin with. Just a surmise, but if you roll that one around a bit, it makes sense: if you've never developed your personal resources, you don't really have much to fall back on when the input stops.

What we seem to have here is another instance of people arguing from different points on a continuum.

Silence has much to offer us, Maitland argues. I mean, once you get away from the men and women that silence drove crazy and suicidal. But she reports that periods of isolation and silence can bring a deepening sense of self, a connectedness with the divine and with the world, and a disinhibitedness.

You can also find those things just by thinking a little -- growing older helps, too, as long as you keep your eyes -- and ears -- open.

One note on technology: I do try not to be too dependent on it, although if my computer were to die, I'd really be in a pickle. But that's just it: technology is vulnerable, and the more complex and widespread it is, the more vulnerable it becomes. It's wise, I think, to remember that.

(Via Patrick Appel at The Daily Dish.)