Thank you, Addison, for posting this video on silence. I have felt like I’m alone in detesting noise pollution, and frequently I try to imagine what daily life sounded like before the internal combustion engine. It was interesting to me that I only noticed the aural onslaught after coming back to one of the world’s largest cities after spending 3 years away in a remote log home in the mountains. I never thought about silence in those mountains—maybe because the sounds of nature—wind through the pines, a distant barking of a dog, the howling of the coyotes, the hoot of a great gray owl, rain on the metal roof, a log moving in the wood stove at night—are so companionable. Even my dog never barks as though she too appreciates those strains of the natural world. In the great cities it almost feels as though the constant racket is purposeful, meant to drive peace away. I find the sounds my house makes as the logs cool down at night so comforting, taking up a muted quiet conversation amongst themselves. One person in the documentary did say that silence isn’t something exotic, and yet the various scenes of the tea ceremony and the monastery almost suggested that silence is an exotic, esoteric landscape that isn’t for everyone and I certainly don’t agree with that. But maybe that was a way to underscore how unusual it is to find silence in our world today.
Two responses well up from deep within. (1.) Silence frightens adults and children whose attention and inner voice of ‚who they are’ suffers daily invasions and debris from chatter, unsocial media, gossip, and allowing themselves to be tossed on an unruly sea of half-truths. (2). Arvo Pärt‘s ‚De Profundis.‘
When all relevant other variables are taken into account it has been shown in various studies that city dwellers die 6 to 7 years earlier than those who live in a small town or country environment with less noise
Thank you, Addison, for posting this video on silence. I have felt like I’m alone in detesting noise pollution, and frequently I try to imagine what daily life sounded like before the internal combustion engine. It was interesting to me that I only noticed the aural onslaught after coming back to one of the world’s largest cities after spending 3 years away in a remote log home in the mountains. I never thought about silence in those mountains—maybe because the sounds of nature—wind through the pines, a distant barking of a dog, the howling of the coyotes, the hoot of a great gray owl, rain on the metal roof, a log moving in the wood stove at night—are so companionable. Even my dog never barks as though she too appreciates those strains of the natural world. In the great cities it almost feels as though the constant racket is purposeful, meant to drive peace away. I find the sounds my house makes as the logs cool down at night so comforting, taking up a muted quiet conversation amongst themselves. One person in the documentary did say that silence isn’t something exotic, and yet the various scenes of the tea ceremony and the monastery almost suggested that silence is an exotic, esoteric landscape that isn’t for everyone and I certainly don’t agree with that. But maybe that was a way to underscore how unusual it is to find silence in our world today.
Two responses well up from deep within. (1.) Silence frightens adults and children whose attention and inner voice of ‚who they are’ suffers daily invasions and debris from chatter, unsocial media, gossip, and allowing themselves to be tossed on an unruly sea of half-truths. (2). Arvo Pärt‘s ‚De Profundis.‘
When all relevant other variables are taken into account it has been shown in various studies that city dwellers die 6 to 7 years earlier than those who live in a small town or country environment with less noise