The sounds of silence

Since this is a blog, and since everybody knows that bloggers don't develop new content, but rather depend parasitically on the ideas of others, let's begin with a quote. In her recent memoir A Book of Silence (which I breezily admit that I have not read in full - cherrypicking being another prerogative of the contemporary blogger), Sara Maitland writes that "I am convinced that as a whole society we are losing something precious in our increasingly silence-avoiding culture and that somehow, whatever this silence might be, it needs holding, nourishing and unpacking."

Re-reading that for a third time, I still can't say that I'm convinced that silence needs unpacking (which has become one of the worst of academic cliches; eventually some poor scholar working on a cultural history of the suitcase will unintentionally note that the suitcase has to be unpacked as a phenomenon). But I certainly agree with her primary point: silence is rare in contemporary America.

Do you doubt it? Well, to settle the point I suppose we could wander about, sound-level meters in hand. But, in the absence of such equipment, or such resolve (if I'm going to wander about with high-tech gear at arm's length, it's gonna be a metal detector, for obvious reasons) a five-month-old in a Baby Bjorn actually turns out to be a pretty good gauge of what is and what is not loud.

Cleo, as you know, goes everywhere with us. And, like most babies, she doesn't much like loud noises. She no longer exhibits the Moro reflex, and so doesn't startle, but a boisterous cocktail party or nearby motorcycle will pretty quickly upset her, while a walk by the relatively quiet Jones Falls tends to yield interested glances and a pleasant, placid mood. As a result, I've grown, by extension, more attuned to noise: like the handler of some hypersensitive diva, I try to avoid potentially upsetting situations.

But they turn out to be, unfortunately, rather common. Lisa, bless her heart, recently took Cleo into ESPNZone briefly to buy a co-worker a gift card -only to report that it sounded like a battle zone and that Cleo appeared simply overwhelmed (I think of the wavy lines that Schultz used to indicate Charlie Brown's common grief). When I drove Cleo to the Towson mall recently - it was rainy; an indoor stroll seemed a nice alternative to another hour of crinkly toys on a mat - I soon realized that it was impossible to find a space in the mall through which a soundtrack didn't weave. And when we wandered, for a brief moment (might jeans be on sale?) into Abercrombie and Fitch? Forget about it: Cleo burst into tears that were just barely audible over the crushing music.

Sure, those are stores. But even in more natural settings, manmade sounds intrude. I've already noted in this blog that we can always hear, from our tree-covered lawn, the traffic from nearby roads. So, too, along the river: yesterday our nanny opted to stay in, instead of taking Cleo for an afternoon walk, as a large lawnmower was at work. And the parks in the rich county to the north of the city? Well, even they are peppered by the barks of dogs, the occasional overhead airplane or distant beep of a construction vehicle or car alarm system.

In one sense, this is just a fact of life; it doesn't need unpacking so much as it needs accepting - and certainly Cleo isn't bothered by the regular noises of dogs and roads. But the very process by which she, and we, have grown accustomed to such noise can lead one, as Maitland writes, to forget the revelatory quality of silence. While we walk, I often offer an occasional commentary on what Cleo's seeing: A tree. That's a tree. I see a big puddle. And so on. Cleo sometimes follows my pointing finger, and I imagine that sometimes she's actually listening to me. But, now that I think about it, perhaps it's telling that she never complains when I don't speak.

Perhaps learning words is pleasurable, on some level, to a baby on a walk. But perhaps the quiet of a walk without a soundtrack is equally, or more so.