Monday, June 13, 2005
Noise Pollution
There's something wrong with people who have to listen to music - or have sound coming out of speakers - every moment of their waking hours. Alot of people have to live with this at work all day & can't even choose the station. But then to stick little speakers in one's ears for the walk to car, the car radio on the ride home, & at home more music or talk radio or TV until bedtime. Add to that now the pointless chatter of people using up their cell phone "anytime minutes." Their talk invades my space, on the train, on the street, in supermarkets, the obnoxioous beeping of walkie talkies, a sound I associate with drug dealers. The guy across the hallway has radio music playing whenever he's home, many types from gospel to oldies. It's always loud & it's constant I'm glad I don't share a wall.
I need periods without noise. Because as composer John Cage pointed out, there's no such thing as silence. Even in a sealed, acoustic room one hears the beating of one's heart & the hum of one's nervous system. & around here there is rarely no sound coming from outside - it's the reason I enjoy staying up until three or four a.m. Most blog entries dated after 11 pm were actually written a few hours later, during a late night period when there's little traffic & no one on the street (although some nervous guy upstairs paces, I plan to break his legs soon). I might listen to a bit of music on the internet or after I get into bed & read. I fully appreciate the best music I hear at home by not playing one thing after another. Yesterday I was listening to a new CD of Charles Ives piano music, hardly background music anyway. Many of the pieces were short. Every so often I paused the player at the end of a cut until I felt ready to go on.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
I need periods without noise. Because as composer John Cage pointed out, there's no such thing as silence. Even in a sealed, acoustic room one hears the beating of one's heart & the hum of one's nervous system. & around here there is rarely no sound coming from outside - it's the reason I enjoy staying up until three or four a.m. Most blog entries dated after 11 pm were actually written a few hours later, during a late night period when there's little traffic & no one on the street (although some nervous guy upstairs paces, I plan to break his legs soon). I might listen to a bit of music on the internet or after I get into bed & read. I fully appreciate the best music I hear at home by not playing one thing after another. Yesterday I was listening to a new CD of Charles Ives piano music, hardly background music anyway. Many of the pieces were short. Every so often I paused the player at the end of a cut until I felt ready to go on.
