In Ted Conover's recent NYT Book Review titled "Noises Off" he begins his review of three books about silence with a thought provoking question:
"So it might not surprise that a writer has just come out with a book about the problem of noise. But what does it mean that three have done so, within barely a month?" Conover follows up by noting that early in each book the writer details a sonic encounter that he admits has him nodding with sympathy as a fellow "noise crank."
This phrase got me to thinking about my own annoyance with certain sounds like the ugly and ubiquitous leaf-blower, like some high-pitched banshee of our mechanical domination. The oddly droning screech of a leaf-blower can be heard a half-mile away, so then how loud is too loud?
If I can attach audio to this post, I'll upload a recording I made outside our home. We live on a hill on the south side of the James River just outside of Richmond, VA. This area is rich with wildlife and in the recording you can hear hawks and crows and cardinals, the distant roar of the river and.....
leafblowers, cars and trucks, jets, low-flying planes and helicopters.
It's SO peaceful here in the woods!
But those moments of silence in between the mechanical noises are as peaceful and uplifting as they could be. In such moments, the efficacy and necessity of such natural noises is clear. As R. Murray Schafer noted in his 1977 book The Soundscape we have become increasingly conditioned to, desensitized by and accepting of noise - and of the power it represents.
Jacques Attali discusses noise and power in his slim 1985 publication Noise: the Political Economy of Music, noting that it is power that gets to define what constitutes "noise" while also justifying its own expressions of sound. From the sonic sieges of Manuel Noregia and the Branch Davidian cult at Waco, the US Government has deployed sound as a weapon.
This fact might move us to pause and consider the impact of our own soundscapes on our physical health and emotional well-being. It may be that we are growing to need the sound of the machine and so experience great anxiety in the absence of mechanical sounds - but is this evolution?
