George Prochnik writes in the introduction to In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise:
“One spring day I went in pursuit of silence in downtown Brooklyn. I live not far away from where I began my search, on a leafy street that is, relatively speaking, a haven of quiet in a relentless city. I have a small garden, and the rooms where I sleep, work, and spend time with loved ones are surrounded by old, thick walls. Even so, I’m woken by traffic helicopters; I’m aggravated by sirens and construction . . . And then there are the screeching bus brakes, rumbling trucks unsettling manhole lids, and the unpredictable eruptions of my neighbor’s sound systems. I’m scared of becoming a noise crank, but I’ve just always loved quiet. I love to have conversations without straining to hear. I love, frankly, staring up from my book into space and following my thoughts without having any sound crashing down, demanding attention.”
George Michelson Foy is also in pursuit of silence in Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence. Prochnik and Foy both share a variety of perspectives on silence–from history, science, religion to their own personal recollections and experiences. In Foy’s quest for silence he even ventures to what the Guinness Book of World Records calls “the quietest place on earth,” a place where no one has ever been able to spend more than 45 minutes before finding the silence unbearable. It seems there is a fine balance between over and under stimulation. Foy writes of a farmhouse, a place which seems to be just right for him:
“It’s an old, dark house, smelling of dry rot and smoke, with a fieldstone hearth and thick walls. The farm lies deep in the hills of the Berkshires, far from any roads. It’s the dead of night, at midwinter. The air is frozen and void of wind. Farmhouse, meadows, and woods surrounding are buried in a quilt of snow so deep that everything alive has chosen not to fight, but burrow instead below the white and go to sleep. All is cold and silent, on that farm in mind, that the stars, shining against a sky the color of tarnished lapis, seem to give off a vibration that is not sound and not light but something in between–something that is perhaps the essence of silence itself.”
I hope after the loud and bustling holidays that you find just the right place, too. Maybe you can lazily stare out into space, maybe with a book in your lap, having no particular aim for your thoughts.
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