Hi Friend, happy new year! I hope you had a great time in Iceland, sadly without me. We will try again next year (or perhaps I will be in Germany? Who knows??)
Anyway, I am sitting here in silence, and it is causing me to reflect a lot on the word and concept. Recently a friend told me I could not continue to drown out my thoughts forever. So, I thought I would write some thoughts down.
Room Tone
So, if you know anything about movies or films in general, you should know that even the “silent” parts of movie have sound. They have “room tone” which is basically just a recording of the ambient noise that room produces. For example, if you were in a large office space, there would be small noises from adjacent offices, noises would bounce more, and potentially other sounds like wind across the windows or the hum of a refrigerator. On the other hand, if you are in a small bathroom, maybe there is some dripping water, or sounds of the tile (vs the carpet of the office) and so on.
Room Tone essentially means that nothing is ever silent. If we watched a movie that had silent parts with no room tone, it would feel off or unnatural (theres actually a good chance this is used in horror movies now that I think about it). Like, right now I’m sitting in a “silent” room, but I can hear the heat on, noises from a distant highway, someone shovelling a few doors down, and my cat snoring in the next room over. Then of course there is the sound of me sniffling (still not over that cold) and typing (it would be really hard to type this silently, though I guess I could do it on my phone if that wasn’t on 2%).
Observing Room Tones could turn into a sort of meditation. It takes some serious concentration and spacial awareness to truly listen to the silence. Last night I heard a strange murmur breaking the silence and it took me several hours to 1. place it outside my house and 2. figure out what it was (a snowblower/mini-plow hybrid, down the road). Sometimes it feel impossible to recognize the sounds, or even hear them because of the ringing in my ears, which seems to only get louder when there is nothing to actively listen to.
Snow Silence
I feel as though there is a certain kind of silence that is only achieved when it snows. I grew up on a highway, and so there was always a backdrop of cars and trucks to my life. However, when it snowed, especially something like a Nor’Easter or foot+ of snow, even the cars remained in their parking spaces. The only thing you could hear was your own breath as you cleared the driveway, and the sounds of your shovel scrapping the ground.
Scientifically, the fresh fallen snow literally traps sound. That helps with the illusion that all is extra quiet. Sound gets trapped between all the fluffy flakes and the waves literally cannot all escape to our ears.
Earbud Craze
Now, I am all for listening to music. You know this. My listening time for Of Monsters And Men this year was higher than a lot of my friends total minutes listened. I often grab earbuds as I walk, be that to the super market or a friends place. I have a hard time being alone with my thoughts. Songs get so damn stuck in my head, it is easier to just drown them out with more music than let it repeat endlessly over other thoughts.
Earbuds are a new thing, especially wireless ones. They will eventually go out of style, but until then, they are the main way that people listen to music or podcasts or whatever while doing literally everything. I hooked up my headphones to my laptop while I was shovelling last night. The laptop stayed inside while I was wirelessly connected outside, so that nothing had to get wet. When they disconnected, though, I was forced into silence. I forget how nice it can be, sometimes, to just hear nothing. It takes practice to be able to sit with yourself like that.
Conclusion
While I was writing this, I was itching to turn on some music and fill the silence. That kind of defeats the purpose of writing about silence- immediately just pushing it away. I hate new years resolutions, so this is not one, it is just a coincidence that I happen to be writing this at the new year.
Why I Hate New Years Resolutions
Personally, growth is an all-the-time deal. Not just a random day in our rotation around some star that we decided to call Jan 1’st problem. I appreciate taking the time to reflect on ones self and realize what one wants to work on. It’s just so weird that it feels so forced. Also, people are so hard on themselves when they fail or make a mistake in their goals, as though that doesn’t happen to literally everyone.
I want to try and spend more time in silence. I think it would be healthy for me to not constantly push away my thoughts and mask my feelings under music.
Love ya bro,
A
I never knew there was a name for ambiance of a room, the room tone. I like it though. I think one of the things I missed the most while in Iceland was a lack of noise, my parakeets screaming or cars constantly passing under my windows, instead just a concrete wall surrounded by a small layer of wood.
It’s weird to realize the silence sometimes, when I walk to work sometimes I just hear it all around me, the silence of the suburbs and then the rush of the city. But sometimes, one a Monday morning, you’ll pass through tunnels thriving with people and they’re all dead silent just monotonously trudging to work. That fucks me up. That’s a bad sort of silence I fear. I love snow silence though, there’s something magical about it. When I was a teen, I would stare out the window as the snow was falling and dream about just walking in it for miles because there was nothing else around but the snow and the suburbs. But with climate change we rarely get that sort of snow fall. This winter has definitely been a bust.