Silence ! ! !

Silence actually doesn’t exist. Anywhere. There is an insightful discussion of all this in a recent book by American writer, George Michelsen Foy: “Zero Decibels - The Quest For Absolute Silence”. Even in “the quietest place on earth”, the anechoic chamber in the Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis, Foy could hear things. He describes sounds that emerge when just about every other sound is eliminated -- one is what he calls the Monster Breath, and another is like a bucket dredge at work. Of course he had long known to take account of the noises of his own body at work.

One of the effects of Foy’s research over a couple of years was that he became acutely conscious of the deluge of sounds most of us scarcely notice until we consciously pay attention, from the sounds of wind and weather to the inhuman din of downtown New York. (Tourists certainly notice this shattering racket, even at 3 am, but seemingly the locals get rewired with a sort of soundwall.) Sitting at home on a quiet evening, or at the beach alone, even fully submerged in water, Foy was still receiving a barrage of sound. He writes about the panic that can ensue if for any reason we are deprived of our noise accompaniment, and he surveys ways in which we fill up silent spaces with any din that comforts us.

The thudding approach of some hoon’s vehicle with boom box is happening as I write. Foy also discusses noise, auditory damage and hearing loss.

Aspects of this take me back to university days, Philosophy I, II and III, the empiricism of blokes like Locke, Berkeley and Hume. The classical conundrum: Is there any sound anywhere if there is no one there to hear it?

Foy discusses tinnitus. He thinks most people have some degree of tinnitus. If you live in downtown Manhattan how would you know? He goes to stay with the monks at Citeaux. But contemplatives have long known that it’s pointless to try to eliminate noise. You get rid of as much of it as is practicable and sensible, and you simply accept the rest.

People who come to visit us here at Algies Bay typically comment, how quiet it is! It seems comparatively quiet for anyone who has come from Auckland I guess. That is, until the next bloke fires up some motor. There is a widespread love affair with the internal combustion engine around here, and so the blokes love to run their outboards, motor mowers, line trimmers, leaf blowers (a truly evil device, the loudest of them all up close, and almost completely pointless), chain saws, tractors, motor bikes, pressure sprayers. The air down at the boat ramp in the summer reeks of petroleum fumes, and resonates with the cries of very happy blokes.

Today a neighbour got a very large poplar tree hewn down. It took most of the day, and others showed up to hear the music of chain saws and the hideous huge mulcher which turns tonnes of wood into chips. Never mind the local bird life. The tui and the kokako will no longer sing from that tree in the mornings.

I have come to value silence above most other things. But it is always a relative silence -- like everything else in this bent world, never perfect, at best approximate. The din of the church is one noise I have escaped, rather as the desert fathers and mothers of the 4th and 5th centuries fled the racket of priests and preachers, and theologians, into the wastelands of Syria, Sinai and Egypt.

But also, as far as possible, the clamorous culture that wants to turn us all into happy mindless consumers. Soon it will be necessary to flee the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Some have thought that silence is God’s language. Well certainly, it’s hard to hear any word of God without the best silence we can manage. Interior silence is best, and essential. That takes time and some wise teaching. Interior silence has a lot to do with having faced and recognised one’s personal demons, having learned to let go of what is destructive or unnecessary, having no enemies, and having quelled the voracious ego. There is always further to travel along this road.

External silence is more like a gift, as coming to Algies Bay has been for me.