I was going to have the next #tngpodcast be about "Fun", but littlebirdie suggested the topic of "silence" and ever since it has been tumbling around in my head and more and more I've become excited about the topic. So, it will be the next topic.
The question to the community is simple "What role does silence play in your life" Where and how do you find time for quiet. What does silence mean to you?
I'd be particularly interested in hearing from people with busy schedules.
Silence is actually a very small part of my life. I find myself listening to music almost everywhere I go, and whatever I'm doing. The only time I don't have a pair of headphones on is when I'm talking to people or if I'm reading a physical book. Don't know whether that is good or bad, but it is my pattern of behaviour.
It seems like many people feel the need to always be surrounded by or close to other people. Is this evolved from a pack mentality?
People feel like they need to be surrounded by or close to other people because we are what evolutionary biologists call "eusocial." Eusociality is the tendency for an organism to organize cooperatively, with overlapping adult generations and a division of labour by reproductive and non-reproductive groups. This theory of eusociality was first pioneered by E.O. Wilson. It has since been discovered that the only other organisms that have evolved "true eusociality" are ants, bees, termites, and wasps. Examples of this social organization in mammals is currently controversial. However, it is clear we are eusocial, and as a result, it may be best to think of us as a super-organism (which is how we imagine the eusocial insects). If we really are a super-organism, this would explain why we have a need to be surrounded by others. In a sense, a lone human isn't a human. That is not to say that if you go off into the woods by yourself and never talk to anyone again you would cease to be human. But, consider for a moment what you would be like if you were born in isolation and grew up never knowing another human. Many animals could do this and they would not be that much different as an adult than they would have been in more social circumstances. Some animals do this naturally. They are born and then just live by themselves for most of their lives. But a human would be a shell. You really wouldn't possess any of the behaviours that we would think of as uniquely human. EDIT: Also, I've been thinking about consciousness a lot lately. b_b and I will be doing a podcast on consciousness soon. And I have started to develop the belief that if a human grew up in complete isolation, they would be less conscious than a human that grew up around other humans. So much of my consciousness, and my ability to reflect on consciousness, is intrinsically linked to my connection with other people and the ideas I have shared with other people. Anyway, it's a thought.
I'm late to the game, here, and everything that's been said above me is great, so I'll just share a quick anecdote. I was about 10 or so, on a family vacation with my extended family, and happened to end up watching meaningless TV with my uncle in a hotel room. He was editing a book he was writing at the time, so we weren't talking much, but I think he muted the TV or something and I probably asked him why he didn't want to watch whatever it was. I was so young. He looked up and basically said that silence and quiet played an extremely important role in his life. He said he preferred silence to noise, almost every time. This was unfathomable to me as a rambunctious kid. It literally changed how I thought about the noises and inputs around me. The reason this has stuck with me is that my uncle was a really philosophical, wise person, and those happened to be the last meaningful words he said to me, because he died of a brain tumor later that year. But the message has stayed with me, and I'll never forget that conversation. I didn't know him well, because he lived across the country, but I'll never forget. Silence is powerful.
I thought it was science at first and was very confused... Silence... I tend to live most days void of any silence. If I'm at work I'm listening to music or talking to coworkers, if I'm moving around I have my ipod on and listening to a podcast and if I'm at home I have music playing and even when I don't I usually have a phone going on in the background. That being said, I have more recently, come to really enjoy taking late night walks around the city in "silence". I don't always do it in silence, sometimes I'm listening to music, but more and more I just enjoy the ambient nature of what is going on (then again I guess that implies that this isn't very silent). I think the most silent silence I've ever experienced is in Northern Minnesota in the middle of nowhere...but even then...I'd start to focus on the little noises that you don't notice unless it is "silent". So strange. The above also made me think of another form of "silence" and that would be how silent I am. Occasionally I'll fall into short ruts where the office will be empty, I won't see any friends, and I will just basically not talk for a few days. It is a strange revelation to be walking home and think "hmm, I haven't spoken to anyone today". Saying depressing is too simple, it makes me feel almost cut off from the world at large to be wrapped in that type of silence.
I think the most silent silence I've ever experienced...
That phrase "the most silent silence" screamed at me (tee hee)
thenewgreen, that would be a good question for your podcast. What is your most silent silence? For me, believe it or not, it was just after my daughter was born. She wasn't crying. There were no beeping monitors. A nurse, a doctor, me, the baby daddy, and my mother were all there and she was just "looking" insofar as newborns can see, just looking around in amazement. Magical ... I love silence.
I don't think I have experienced any actual silence for years. I work in a busy loud office, I commute on a noisy train, I fall asleep listening to podcasts or am radio - Does silence even exist in our modern cities? Is the "complete absence of sound" actually possible when thousands of people are densly existing in concrete, artificially lit habitats that are open for business 24/7/365?
I found that silence means very different things for me and my wife. For me, a fair bit of my time is spent in silence, and that can be anywhere: at the computer, driving, sitting on the couch. For my wife, when she was young silence was used by her family as a form of punishment; when someone was not talking it meant that they were ignoring you purposely.
Being ignored as a punishment, well that seems a bit harsh. By my definition of silence, time spent at the computer wouldn't count. My definition would mean that my internal dialog was also silenced. -This is easier said than done, but to be at the computer or even driving doesn't cut it for me. I think we feel exhausted after a long drive not because of the physical demands but the mental one. -It's far from a "silent" state imo. But to others it may be the perfect Zen. We're all different.
There's no such thing as silence (if you're not deaf). You can always hear your own heartbeat and respiration. Silence is also a very subjective experience. We can hear (or imagine) inner sounds when watching or smelling something particular (synergy). I can play whole songs in my head while walking without the aid of a an MP3. People can go crazy if they have to stay in accoustic "dead" rooms (like sound studio's, deprivation chambers, underground mines, spaceships) because lack of sound is very freightehing, like a non-presence. In music, most common in postrock, loud can only be loud if there is also silence to contrast it. When I wan to go someplace silent, I wait for a snowfall. Snow is a great sound absorber. In a snowy mountain forest the heavy leaves won't rustle, so you hardly hear any wind sounds. Colder and thinner air will also give sound less volume.
I can't afford silence. Part of that may be that I'm more sensitive to what "silence" really means but I know that even out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing, I hear wind in trees, insects in grass, aircraft in sky. My uncle's house, in suburban Seattle, was one of the quietest places I've known. The walls and windows were thick and it was well off the flightpath of any airport. In the basement it was quiet enough to hear the blood in your ears. That sort of silence is difficult to find unless you've spent an awful lot of money. As I've mentioned, I've been in truly quiet places. My sister, an architect, called me down to help her office determine how to make their conference room quieter - they were occupying a former bank. I asked them where the vault was - that's where they'd chosen to put the printer for some dumb reason. You couldn't even close the door because the CAT5 cable from the print server would be severed if you tried. I got them to unplug it just so we could see - and yeah, it was quiet. Most people can't afford to build a bank vault. My condo is within the DNL65 contour of LAX - in lay terms, that means the FAA shelled out to give me some dope-ass windows and doors. My unit is well outside of the DNL65 contour, though, so I got the bitchin' doors even without all the aircraft noise (and, by the way, it's far louder 100 yards from a 4-lane, 35mph street than it is a mile from an international airport). My sliding glass door has two panes of double-laminated 1/4" glass with 3/4" of argon in between - sucker weighs an easy 200lbs. And right now, I hear: - the refridgerator - the ice maker ticking - the Seth Thomas - the aquarium percolating (a very pleasant sound) - hard drives in the entertainment system ticking over - the cooling fan on the projector Get rid of all those, and I'll hear the ballast on the LCD and the hum of a wall wart back in the rack somewhere. Silence is expensive. At night, though, when the planes turn around and we have landings rather than take-offs, when the entire world is asleep, and when the air inverts... we actually hear the ocean crashing on the shore, a full mile away. I might not be able to afford silence, but the sounds I can afford can be amazingly pleasant.
There's "silence" and there's "soundscapes." I love the sound of the aquarium. It's a gentle trickle of running water. One thing I don't like is the ticking of the appliance timer that controls its light, but that's a $8 part that I haven't bothered buying. Bet you didn't know appliance timers made noise, did you? The clock is marvelous. I own a surfeit of clocks; I'm not quite Doc Brown in Back to the Future but it's pretty ridiculous. The projector is hella quieter than the last one I had (a $15k Christie from back when projectors were expensive) and unlike the last projector, the cooling fan is only on when it's running. When it's running, I'm generally watching TV. It has taught me how much I dislike refrigerator noise. When I move back to a house from an apartment, I'm definitely remoting the compressor and condenser. Which will put me squarely in the commercial category and that's just fine. When a split-door LG costs $3k I'm cool spending $3500 on restaurant-grade stuff. And really - we're discussing the sound of a running refrigerator and the sound of an appliance timer - two things that people rarely complain about. I'm simply pointing out that they aren't silent. Could be worse; my father's house is nearly silent (now that the dogs are dead) so in order to keep down the roaring of the tinnitus in his ears he has a steady stream of baroque music playing 24/7. And hey - at my place in North Hollywood it was usually the ghettocopter that kept me up.
I'd first say that there is a variety of "silence" that I may experience, but I'd say that I do experience most different types very often. The first is verbal silence. While there may be sound around me, verbal silence is a lack of speech. This is the one that I experience with the most frequency, as I have gone days without saying a single word. Often times, I just don't think about it, since I am primarily caught up in my own thoughts. It doesn't bother me to not speak, since that is only one form of communication. The second is auditory silence, where you do not hear anything. In the strictest sense it is incredibly rare, since that requires tremendous amounts of stillness, down to the air around you. This is something that I've only experienced a few times in my life in particular circumstances. However, if auditory silence is taken with a less strict definition, then it pervades my life. I spend the majority of my day in just a few places: out doors, in the library, or in my living space. Each of those places is quieter than the last, with my apartment being extremely quiet, save for the very gentle hum of the fan in my computer and the fan in my bathroom. Now, how does silence play a part in my life? Well, till recently I had largely been a very big loner, and I am very accepting of my own company. I find being "in my own head" a very comfortable place. I think about my life, what I've done, what I'm doing, where I'm going, why I'm going there, etc. I enjoy recording my thoughts and trying to understand my own mind. I enjoy a lot of silence, in both quantity and duration that I believe many people cannot bear. Silence is beautiful to me. I enjoy communication that is more than just idle chatter, and strangely that level of communication involves a lot of silence. I've found that the closer and more intimate the conversation, the more quiet and slow it becomes. The closest communication I've ever had was an expression of feelings almost entirely devoid of any speech at all. We come from silence, and we return to silence. I think this frightens some, but it comforts me.
My silent time is when I get to go to the barn for a long ride with my boy horse. My girl horse is very very new to riding and needs a lot of praise and encouragement, but my boy horse has been mine since he was three and I was 17 and we just understand each other in silence at this point. He's such an athlete that he enjoys the exercise of a ride as much as I do, down to the point of enjoying fighting me on every little point. I've known, owned, and ridden horses so emotionally sensitive that arguing a point with them as intensely as I do with the boy horse would be abusive, and who would never disobey intentionally to provoke a quarrel like he does, but with the boy horse I can genuinely feel his enjoyment of challenging me and how much he appreciates the physical exhaustion he experiences after a hard ride. I understand him completely, because I feel the same way when he wears me out. He's so well-trained that if he feels like it he can respond to me just moving my eyes--while on his back, where he can't see my eyes--but he likes to test me for fun, and because he knows it entertains me, too (except when he catches me off guard and I eat dirt). The girl horse would NEVER do such a thing, and when she accidentally makes a mistake and realizes it, she's mortified. Sometimes other riders will put on music, and I grit my teeth and don't say anything, but until I manage to tune it out it drives me crazy. That's my non-verbal communication time, and I NEED it dangit!
I, too, use animals as company in my silence. I have two pet rabbits, who, being bunnies by nature, only ever emit sounds when in distress or in want of something. It's very peaceful to sit outside with them and watch them play in the quiet. It's also very nice sometimes to have an absence of noise at home, to just let concentration go, and to focus on nothingness. Then again, I am going through a couple of mental issues currently, so my perspective might be flawed biologically.
Since you're an audio guy, I think you'll understand when I say I don't think I've ever heard true silence. There's a ton of noise everywhere, even when we think we're in a quiet place. That being said, I think I know what you're after here, and I won't waste time on the former. Silence is almost impossible in my life. It's something I have to fight for. I try for at least 5-15 minutes of quiet prayer, pondering, and meditation every day. I don't always succeed at this - but when I miss it, I really MISS it. For me, that time is crucial to regroup, resync, and commune with myself and my god. It's a way baseline my day/week/year/life.
True silence will freak you out. Anechoic chambers are spooky; it feels as if something is being stripped bodily away from you. But they aren't "silent" because there's always something going on in them. A firm I worked for did design work for Paul Allen. He has a studio. And for some reason, he decided his drum room needed to be NC5. Here's a Noise Criterion explanation. You'll note it doesn't go down to NC5. That's because the presence of a human in an NC5 environment pushes it to NC10, even if they hold their breath. To measure an NC5 environment you have to put your device on a timer and close the door. It was the first time I'd been exposed to something that quiet. It's actually oppressive. You hear... you. If it was something you'd run across by accident you'd find it quite uncomfortable.
This is really interesting to me. I can see why it would be uncomfortable but I wonder if it could be used to help facilitate a better mind/body connection. We so easily forget that we are essentially piles of meat, blood and bone clanking around breathing and emitting any number of things. Might put one in touch with their mortality, their mechanisms. So, how long were you inside one of these?
;-) Is this seriously the first time you've stumbled across Sense-dep? Or are you pulling my leg? Either way, I've got your Friday night movie selection.
THANK YOU for the link, I've not seen this movie but will this weekend. I've definitely come across Sense-dep before but I've never talked with anyone that has partook. I'm genuinely curious what the experience is like from a first hand account?
Paddy Chayefski's last, and probably Ken Russell's closest to mainstream (he also did Tommy and Lair of the White Worm). it's not a great film, but it sure is weird. Hanging out in an NC5 environment isn't sensory deprivation per se; it's just strange to discover just how much of our sense of place is related to the environment around us. Take away that environment and we start to feel unmoored.
What exactly is silence? Is it merely not having any auditory input? Because as an only child with parents who go to bed quite early, my life has had a lot of opportunity for that kind of silence. Or is it a more profound kind of silence, with no input, no motion or restlessness, with focus? If that's the case, I rarely encounter silence, although often by my own action. I find that I get a lot of quiet at night, by myself. I'm often up IMing with friends or reading things on the internet until late but when it's really, actually quiet and I'm not looking at a screen or chatting with anyone, I usually fantasize. It used to be general stories, sometimes super heroes or things from anime that inspired me, and I'd come up with characters and settings and try to come up with cool quirks. They rarely amounted to much. Since then I've actually channeled a lot of these kinds of fantasies into roleplaying with my friends. It's the quiet of the night that I come up with setting ideas, quirky NPCs, scenarios, combat encounters better than "you're in a square room with 4 goblins." I try to think of all the possible branches (there's never enough, they always undermine my original plans). I sometimes feel like my ideas don't translate as well into practice but I try to keep a log of them so that I can find ways to enact these (game)master plans when the mechanical part of my brain is turning. Fantasizing about life things is also quite common. Running conversations with a friend, a boss, a girl, a fictional interviewer - I don't know whether these make me more or less anxious about these things but I guess it's how I do things.
I read about this in a science magazine a long time ago, and If anyone knows anything about this please respond.
In silence my ears often amplify background noise to be almost shouting volume, resulting in me listening to music instead of reading. I seem to remember it being along the lines of, my brain is so used to content noise, with being in a Big Band and attending a male only school, that if I get worked up my brain jacks up the static in my ear drums to annoy me. If someone speaks to me it sounds as though they are shouting. So, yeah, happy days.
By the image provided, I interpret the essence of your question to mean some introspective and meditative quality. Like, @theadvancedapes, silence is nil to none in my life. I don't know, I may have some undiagnosed form of adult ADHD or something. I have to have some sort of "background" noise. It isn't that I'm afraid of silence, per se, but I am somewhat uncomfortable in it. I've been accused of being in my own head too much, as I have the tendency to agonize over things in my mind for hours, days, weeks...Music and chatter are white noise that still my mind and stoke my creativity. They are my meditation.
Turns out there is a good reason to feel uncomfortable with silence. It can mean something is about to eat you. Watch/listen to the finished podcast here: http://hubski.com/pub?id=69439 It's not too long, you should be alright, even with your ADHD
I'm just gonna drop a couple of things here without overthinking it: - my ears shut themselves when they feel like: I don't even try to understand what speakers say at stations or airports (almost 100% chance it's not for me), I can learn or write with the radio talking... - while I am quite "good public" and like very different music styles, there is unfortunately still tons of music I can't stand ; i was known in my previous job for powering-off radios and stealing the remote control just in case. I listen much rather to my own car's motor than to bad radio. - I participated once in an art workshop about city sounds and... I proposed a part about silence - one of my previous job was to get international youngsters with difficult backgrounds to enjoy working together towards a common goal ; when visiting Berlin I brought them usually in small groups to the fantastic room of silence in Brandenburger Tor
The BIG question is what music can you use in your podcast to convey silence??? Are you familiar with Jennifer Egan's slide show from her book A Visit to the Goon Squad. The character in the book is obsessed with GREAT ROCK AND ROLL PAUSES. They are on slide 11 on this powerpoint presentation.
Silence is a hard thing to come by, really. Sure, it may be quieter than it usually is - but there's always that noise of distant cars. Maybe because of this, it is such a novelty when a moment of silence does come around. It's something you have to relish really, because leaving such a thing but a few moments of your time seems too unceremonious. You are obliged let it soak in for a while.
By reading this I realized that I am hardly ever in a "quiet place." Usually I have my music blaring (especially on the road), my game turned up a lot, or there are a lot of people around me at work. The only times that I find myself in a truly quiet place are when I'm outside smoking a cigarette or when I'm walking around the house. I'm usually a quiet fellow. I rarely say a lot among strangers and customers (except when I have to), but around my friends I can be pretty talkative. Sometimes at work, I try to see how long I can go and not say a word. If I remember correctly, it was almost an hour last time I tried.
Silence helps me focus, helps me relax. I find it in nature mostly. Walking out to the nature preserve at my school or sitting in front of my fire pit at my house. Silence makes me happy, gives time for contemplation. Silence to me is a natural way of calming down, thinking, regenerating energy. You should always make some time for silent meditation.
I don't know how often I appreciate silence anymore. With classes, work, and a girlfriend, all of my time is occupied and silence isn't a huge part of my life. The only time I really get to myself and be silent is in the morning, and that's only if my roommates aren't awake at the same time. Back in the day when I wasn't as busy, I would often times meditate and try to clear my mind. There is not enough credit given to how calming/relaxing meditating can be. I feel as if it's a very important practice and am pretty bummed I haven't made time for it since classes have begun. My happiest moment involves silence. I was standing on a narrow ridge in Arches National Park, it was the highest part of the trail. I almost got upset with I heard anyone speaking because it felt as if that person was soiling the pureness of that place. Silence is necessary, it's the yan to the yin that is the constant noise we're surrounded by. I believe it's important to sustain a healthy relationship between the two in order to remain sane.