Is our noisy world disconnecting us from our music and ourselves? Is constant background noise causing anxiety and isolation? This week Jack and Bob take a look at how a world of constant noise changes our relationships with music and each other.
Is our noisy world disconnecting us from our music and ourselves? Is constant background noise causing anxiety and isolation? This week Jack and Bob take a look at how a world of constant noise changes our relationships with music and each other.
Welcome to episode number four of Between the Notes!
Over the summer I took a ride out to the top of a nearby ridge. I found a nice place to sit overlooking a pretty valley that was specked with fields and cattle. There were farm buildings and trees way down in the valley. Finding this all very serene, I pulled my phone out of my pocket because obviously, I needed to share this bucolic moment with the rest of the world. But suddenly, like an unexpected punch to the throat I realized there was no cell service on top of this mountain.
There. Was. No. Cell. Service.
I moved my phone around a few times in a desperate attempt to get even one measly bar, but alas, there were no bars to be had. All of those kitty videos and pictures of other people’s lunch were going unviewed by me as long as I sat on this mountain. The struggle was real.
There were no other people around to distract me, so there I sat. No cars, no people, no nothing. Just my thoughts and silence. Or so I thought.
After about 10 minutes of this deafening silence, I started to hear things: first, the bees. There were hundreds of them going about their bird’s and bee’s business on a clover patch nearby. Then I started to hear the cattle down below. In a straight line they were probably a mile or so away, but suddenly I could distinctly hear the difference between each one with their different tones and durations. Even my tinnitus got quieter (or I didn’t notice it as much for some reason). The caw of a crow from some far away unseen place joined in the natural chorus along with the songs and calls of dozens of different birds. A bull frog croaked at something in the stream that was (according to the sign I was sitting near) 960 feet below me.
There was not a human sound to be heard – no cars, no planes, no jibber-jabber. I was immersed in a world of natural sound. To call it ‘noise’ would be wrong. What I was hearing wasn’t noise, what I was hearing was sound – there is a huge difference. I was listening to the music of the planet.
I’ve heard silence before while on hikes to the middle of nowhere, and I’ve spent many hours in anechoic chambers running tests on audio gear, but this silence was special in the way it crept up on me. In the same way your eyes adjust to starlight after ten or twenty minutes when you get them far enough away from artificial light, my ears and my ability to process sound shifted after an extended period of no human background noise. And the longer I sat there with no background noise the more my ears picked up even the slightest sounds. A dragonfly ten feet away sounded as crisp and clear as a jetliner.
Eventually, my reality became the bellow of cows in a distant field and the gentle drone of honeybees doing their thing, and I became deeply envious of people who lived before noise pollution took over our lives. You know, maybe the increase in anxiety in our modern world might just have something to with constant noise. The lack of aural clutter was a joy to behold – even with no cell service. The beauty and nuance of the environment around me was strikingly clear and detailed. My inner monologue was more present.
The next day I rode back to get another dose of this natural beauty, but unfortunately an RV from Indiana got there before me. There it sat, idling away in the summer heat with nary a cow or bee to be heard.
When you listen to music, the same thing happens when your ears are free of clutter and unwanted noise. The world the artist created and invited you to visit opens up in dimensions you can’t experience with the noise of the world around you, competing for processing time in your brain.
Music is great to mask the background noise of the world around you, I use it while working and writing just to calm the ringing in my ears, but it is meant to be so much more. Using music to mask background noise is like grabbing a quick chunk of Wagyu beef to tide you over until you get to Burger King for dinner. It’s all out of whack. Music unfettered by background noise brings you to places you can’t conceive of otherwise. Do your ears (and the rest of you) a favor and find some silence once in a while, and then do your heart and soul the same favor by letting music wash over you on occasion without competition from the outside world.
Our world is loud and noisy and the stress all that noise creates is wearing us all down. We have kind of gotten okay with abusing our sense of hearing. We wouldn’t just stare into a bright light, or force ourselves to hold hot pans or get out of the car to deeply inhale the aroma of a dead skunk, but we’re apparently okay with subjecting ourselves to constant noise.
Life is a great mixture of dark and light, feasts or quick snacks on the go, but we’ve forgotten how important silence is to our general physical and mental well-being let alone our ability to be present with the magic of music.