While there’s a plethora of books on modern (classical) music, minimal
music, experimental and ambient music and even the grey area between
noise, music and sound art, relatively few works have been published on
the topic of the absence of sound: silence. With ‘No Such Thing As
Silence: John Cage’s ’4’33” Kyle Gann astutely addresses, along the lines
of philosophy and working of the great, late American composer himself,
the impossibility of a state of silence and the possibility to
tune our ears to the even musical aspects of this never-silentness.
R. Murray Shafer and his World Soundscape Project take the sonic
environment as a piece of ‘nature’ to be preserved and documented; urban
and human noise as an unwanted byproduct of civilisation, forcing our ears
to a ‘deafness’ towards the true sounds of the earth (wind, water,
animals, et cetera). Now, while published last year, ‘In Pursuit of
Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise’ by George Prochnik is
available in paperback in any good bookstore.
Cover "In Pursuit Of Silence"
Prochnik: “I’ve always been a lover of silence, and this love is bound up
with my passion for books. The writer Stefan Zweig once defined a book as
a “handful of silence that assuages torment and unrest.” For years before
I began writing about the subject, I’d been feeling that silence was a
diminishing natural resource. I wanted to understand whether this was more
than a subjective impression. If so, why had the world become louder, and
what could be done to reinstate silence as a value in our culture?”
“Living in New York City, I couldn’t help being aware that almost everyone
I knew hated the city’s noisiness. But if everyone despises noise so much,
why is there so much of it? And why do so many noise-haters also spend
hours of the day with iPods in their ears, sleep next to loud
air-conditioners, turn on televisions the moment they walk into a room,
and crank up their car radios the moment they sit down behind the wheel?”
“We’re never going to make progress toward creating a quieter world until
we learn to understand our secret love affair with noise. Part of what we
have to recognize is that noise is a compelling stimulant. This noise-high
can be addictive and adding your own din into the mix can become a way of
exerting control. Stepping back from all the stimulation is not easy, but
it can be done. Rather than cutting out stimulation, I went searching for
the kinds of sonic wonders that only become audible when we manage to
quiet down the world around us.”
“Instead of being against noise, I think we need to begin making a case
for silence. This means getting imaginative about expanding our
understanding of silence in ways that develop associations between silence
and a vibrant, fulfilling life. Anti-noise activists often compare noise
pollution to air pollution. But unlike smoke, lots of noises are good, at
least some of the time. Instead, we might frame noise as a dietary
problem. Most of us absorb far too much sonic junk. We need to develop a
more balanced sound diet in which silence, and sounds we associate with
quiet states of mind, become part of our daily regimen.”
“My hope is that by making positive experiences of silence more broadly
accessible, more people will be tempted to cultivate silence of their own
volition. Who knows? If we manage to recover more quiet in the world,
maybe people will even begin reading more books again–rediscovering what
can be contained in a handful of silence.”
‘In Pursuit of Silence’ therewith makes a case for revaluation of silence
as silence, pure. The interesting point taken by Prochnik is that he
focusses not on the inferred (by Cage) musicality of urban noise, but
quite the opposite: the spiritual, biological, psychological and even
monteray or economic (true) value of silence in the life of modern man.
George Prochnik
At the ‘Hear It!’ evening in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam this last
April, it turned out a concert of John Cage’s famous 4 minutes and 33
seconds of non-musical sounds by Hans Aarsman proved too long a time for
some people to listen to the “silence” (i.e. the musical non-silence of
ambient sounds); whispering, chattering throughout the performance.
Wouldn’t it indeed, as Prochnik argues, not be a time nowadays in which
modern man detests noise (and supresses it with iPods and the like), while
at the same time, modern man cannot anymore stand ‘silence’, nor knows the
value thereof?
In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise
George Prochnik
Anchor, ISBN 9780767931212 (paperback)
Published: 05 April 2011
