The Sound of (Partial) Silence/The Noises of Life

I'm confident in assuming that a certain Simon & Garfunkel song just played in your head. Last week someone asked me why I preferred to enjoy my Saturday night in silence rather than having music playing in the background of whatever I was doing. I replied, "Because I hear noise for most of the day, every day. Silence is rare and beautiful". Does anyone really know what "silence" is though? Keep reading.


People who spend a lot of time with me know that I almost always put on music in my car. Music is something special and important to me; especially since I am a musician. There is music in all of the places I go on a daily basis. I even have specific music playing while writing to you all. However, this isn't only about music. Life is so noisy that people (who have the ability to hear) tune out certain sounds. How often do you really listen? I don't mean listening when being spoken to. That's simple and automatic. Do you ever just stop in the middle of a task or in a random place to soak in every sound that your ear can possibly detect? This requires a great amount of focus. One must quiet the mind because thoughts, as silent as we think they are, can overpower sounds that actually exist in nature and are audible to others. I challenge you to try this today. Take two minutes; just one hundred and twenty seconds out of your day to listen.

Lately, I've been driving to work in the mornings without music. This isn't something I had planned or something that I wanted to experiment with. I simply have no desire to hear it sometimes. That is all. Hearing the hum of the engine, the wind slicing over slightly lowered windows, the rapid clicking of my turn signal, the crashing of ice cubes in my bottle as I take a sip of water, and peacocks shrieking is enough. On days when I do feel like listening to music in the car, I sometimes choose instrumentals over songs with lyrics. Think about it. You hear words almost all the time. People are always talking. Either you're thinking out loud, you're conversing with someone, the deals of the day are being announced on the PA at the grocery store, etc. I find it to be exhausting. So at that point, lyrics are just more talking. Instead of  having something pleasant to hear, I end up listening and processing the words and the meanings. It becomes work.

Of course true silence is hard to come by...if anyone is able to encounter it. Even if you're alone in your "quiet" room, you're not really in silence. The ear picks up on the air conditioner blowing, the fan spinning, your wristwatch ticking, and even the sounds of your own heartbeat and breathing. Even in the deepest "silence" you'll ever experience, your brain will create noise to fill it. That's just the way it works. So "silence" is only what we call quietness or lack of sounds that we consciously hear.

So revisiting the introduction of this post, when I replied to the person's question, I really meant that quietness is rare and beautiful; not silence. I do not know silence. Perhaps noise signals to our brains that everything is okay. If you experienced five seconds of dead silence, I think you'd panic. It isn't what we are used to. Noise is normal. Do you think that it is possible to encounter true silence?

-Indigo

Photo credit: Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND