The sound of no silence
No matter what the temperature in this baked land, the whirring of a fan can be heard. If you are near me, the light licks of mechanical breeze will fan across your face. With it, carried a scent. Maybe of figs or citrus, maybe of my body heating up the subtle perfume I wear from time to time. But these fans, while making me feel less claustrophobic, serve a greater, less obvious purpose.
Noise.
I am an addict of noise, in its most egregious and subtle forms. I do not enjoy all of it, but I cushion myself in the staticky cocoon of the vibrations against my eardrums. At night, the silent skies are split apart by the rumbling bellies of passing planes and I crane to hear them more fully. Cars speeding against the blackness pull me out of my thoughts and into the room.
Sometimes the noise, the pressure of it in my head, so riddled with headaches makes tears settle into the corners of my eyes. These headaches which I sometimes feel are blessings. Maybe they are sent to split my head open and let the ideas tumble forth, little bits of brain and ache. When they are too thick to allow me to sleep, I watch him sleeping next to me. Soft snoring, another layer of noise, spilling from the lips I get to kiss. I trace the line of his neck into his shoulder and wonder how sound looks as it rolls down that slope.
I am never in silence, for fear of the internal noise that is sure to surface. To spin up from me like a storm and drown out the progress. I suppose it is time to let the rain clouds do what they will. They are not for me to control.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
While your reasons for finding solace are your own, I would say that most modern folk in developed nations have a similar reliance on noise for comfort, for tamping down internal sounds. It is so rare that people are in still, quiet, silence.
Even in our hotel room this past week, I had to run white noise off a website throughout the night, just to cover the sounds of the street and my kids sleeping. I am with you.
June 20th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
this piece of writing is full of sounds and silences, to be so sensitive of ear is a beautiful thing in itself, to turn to hear the plane passing is like sitting in the front row at the world symphony and not just a way to muffle inner sounds, though it may however fill you with the presence of the moment with no more than what it is and remind you of the past that isn’t part of it
June 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I want the silence when I have hiked to a very hidden hanging lake or waterfall. Other than that…I too require noise in the background. But I am particular about my background noises.
Peace.
June 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
This is a beautiful piece of writing.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Never silence, anywhere.
Perhaps we would go insane without it, like those people in the Issac Asimov book who go insane when all the suns set at once, and there is darkness for the first time.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I find it difficult to sleep when there is only silence. I enjoy the sound of the CSX freight passing through nearby several times during the night.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
I like to think there is a time for progress and a time for noise. Your tenderness in your listening is a lovely thing.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
I sleep with our bathroom fan on every night.
I’m selective about my ambiance noise . . . I’m not one to have earbuds dangling from my hears every minute of the day.
But when I’m in the car? There’s always a tune playing . . .
June 20th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
. . . and yet, I don’t fear the noise within. I know they are there, the sirens. I’ve given up trying to drown them out . . .
June 20th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
silence makes my ears ring. but i don’t think that’s what you meant.
your writing is gorgeous.
June 20th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Silence feels deafening, controlling, smothering, to me.
Even in the womb, there are whooshes and beats.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
beautifully written.
June 20th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
i hate silence. one of the hardest things for me in leaving new york city. i miss all the noises that were a part of my daily life.
June 20th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
This was beautiful.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I’m reading a very good book you might enjoy. The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield.
For me, silence is golden, especially when I’m trying to fall asleep.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
The comfort of noise that means we are alive. I hear you.
June 21st, 2009 at 4:39 am
No, no! There is a peace in the noise. I don’t like to be in quiet either. Makes me antsy. And I take a sleeping pill, put on a fan even on the coldest of nights and one big pillow on my ear every night. I remember years of thinking and not sleeping. It doesn’t make me feel nostaligic at all.
We’re supposed to be ok in quiet. I think it’s overrated. You just be.
June 21st, 2009 at 5:05 am
Silence fails to drown out the voice in our heads. I can hear the fan in the adjoining room now.
June 21st, 2009 at 6:41 am
I have to sleep with a fan, blowing on my face. I need noise too, silence brings anxiety. The noise in my head needs to be turned down but the external noise. Your writing, beautiful as always, resonates with me.
June 21st, 2009 at 7:42 am
Sometimes, it seems like silence is the only thing loud enough to drown out the voices in my head.
And, before you get all snarky with me, I mean that in a (mostly) non-psycho way.
June 21st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Beautiful writing!!
Silence is sadness. A quiet house after the kids are grown and gone.
June 21st, 2009 at 7:33 pm
“…little bits of brain and ache…”
A gem. One I would like to steal. And I know very well the cost of not drowning out the interior noise, but…yes, sometimes the storms have to do what they will, like brushfires.
June 21st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
I always thought we lived in relative quiet, that my husband took me wilderness camping…I realize how unfamiliar silence really was.
June 21st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
some people simply need more stimulus than others. that may be part of it.
June 21st, 2009 at 10:47 pm
You and my husband both. I just described to him the other night the difference when he’s home and not-when he’s not, it’s like I’m blissfully alone in an empty gym, with only my echoing thoughts and breath, when he’s home, it’s like being stuck on a static, pixelated tv channel.
Maybe it’s the bipolar, I don’t know. But I crave silence like I once craved cigarettes.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:20 am
Thoughtful and thought-provoking. Hmmm.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:55 am
I do need to have a little white noise to sleep so keep a fan running even on cool nights with it set to exhaust, but noise during the day can sometimes make me feel like clawing my ears off my head. I’m super sound sensitive and feel poisoned by a lot of the everyday sounds of life and commerce. I like quiet during the day. Deep, still quiet. Not that I ever get that.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:26 am
Silence is unnerving.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
I sleep with a fan or a humidifier. A little white noise keeps things consistent.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:50 am
“the silent skies are split apart by the rumbling bellies of passing planes”
what a glorious image.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Lovely, Flutter.
I too suffer from headaches, but when i do, I can’t bear any noise at all.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I’m uncomfortable in complete silence as well. I keep music playing pretty much whenever I’m awake. I need it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:22 pm
This is beautiful.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I often find peace in the noise.
Beautifully written post.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm
The strangest thing is that I love the sound of the sea but hate those devices that help people to sleep by creating the same sound. The sound of cicadas can bring me back to my summers as a kid on my Grandparents farm. When I hear them, I fight away tears and close my eyes and sercretly wish that when I open them again, I’ll be 8 years old standing in front of their house. Beautifully written post.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:18 pm
wow. your descriptions. wow.
“Maybe they are sent to split my head open and let the ideas tumble forth, little bits of brain and ache.”
beauty in a headache. lusting for noise.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
YOU.
So gorgeous.
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
And, thus one of the reasons the TV is always on . . . always. Yet, I seldom actually watch.
Silence is deafening. My mind won’t shut up.
Though sometimes, rarely, I welcome it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 pm
recently, I just want the noise to stop. the lost memories have been bubbling to the surface this week, drenched in the sweat of self doubt, and they scream so loudly in my head that all I want is silence.
your rain clouds and my screaming inner voice, I think, are one in the same. I listen to so much music to drown out the thoughts, but I wish I could have a blissful silence at the same time.
sorry, I ramble late at night. and the sounds of San Francisco are coating my mind now. the sound of Muni, of Bart, of the distance sirens….
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:31 am
Funny, I yearn for silence. I walk through rooms turning things off. I feel like the Grinch, hammered on the head by all the noise, noise, noise.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:27 pm
i don’t mind silence. it’s my own noise, when i can’t get still enough to settle and hear myself think, that gets to me. but when i moved to the Arctic years ago, my boyfriend at the time was freaked out by the silence, a place with almost no background hum of “civilization”.
June 23rd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Sigh. Sure, I was reading this, but it was the most beautiful noise I’ve heard all day.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:12 am
wow. that was incredible.
I often crave the loud and hectic life- it distracts me on many occasion from the sadness
of loss.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:35 am
This is how I feel about music. I need the music on most of the time. My husband doesn’t understand this. Damn him.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I loved this. I sleep with a noisemaker set to “waterfall.” It just drowns out the noises that would otherwise catch my ear.
June 28th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I love that thing when heat steams the smell of lotion from my skin. One of my favorite things about afternoon sex.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:16 am
One of the thinks I loved about living in Tahoe was the fact I could sit outside and not hear one air conditioner roar to life. The birds and breeze. That was it. It was wonderful, and I miss it.