peace and quiet

July 27, 2016 8:50 AM

This Is Your Brain on Silence
posted by infini (29 comments total)

I guess all those people in the monasteries and cloistered convents were onto
something.

Be still and know that I am God.
posted by BarcelonaRed at 9:17 AM on July 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

*
posted by King Sky Prawn at 9:20 AM on July 27, 2016

OK I give up what does the asterisk mean?
posted by BarcelonaRed at 9:30 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

 
posted by not_the_water at 9:49 AM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is me turning on a fan or some other white noise so that I'm not left alone with my echoing tinnitus.
posted by charred husk at 9:51 AM on July 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

Vikman remembers a time when she experienced the rarity of nearly complete silence. Standing in the Finnish wilderness, she strained her ears to pick out the faintest sounds of animals or wind. “It’s strange,” she says, “the way you change. You have all the power—you can break the silence with even with the smallest sounds. And then you don’t want to do it. You try to be as quiet as you can be.”

Yes. I can vividly remember the first time I experienced true silence while visiting a farm, at about age fifteen or sixteen. I walked out to explore the fence line, then stopped at a place where there were empty fields all around and just stood there, listening. At first there was a slight hushing noise of wind on grass and the occasional distant bleat of a sheep, but after a while it all seemed to go away and there was ... nothing. No sounds at all. It was scary at first, as some part of me kept trying to listen for the noises of a few moments before - but after an indefinable time I got used to it, and I seemed to... expand. I didn't actually grow larger, but that's what it felt like, a feeling of expansion and sudden clarity of thought that went on and on. Afterwards I checked my watch and the whole thing took less than fifteen minutes, but it felt like forever.

We're always surrounded by noise, even if most of is at low volume. Right now I can hear the drone of my fan, a distant siren, a nearby bird chirping, and the omnipresent surf-like sound of cars. None of it is loud, but it forms a constant background. That's why it feels so profound when one occasional encounters true silence.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:11 AM on July 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Re: charred husk's comment, I sometimes find myself in a location that's completely silent. Except for the unceasing whine of the tiny violin in my head playing a single note into infinity. Gratefully, I can ignore it, but, boy, there are times when I'd love to enjoy pristine silence.
posted by the sobsister at 10:19 AM on July 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I live in a reasonably quiet suburban neighborhood and my house is concrete with new, super-insulated windows. It's by no means silent, but it's as close as a lot of my friends and relatives ever get.

Literally ever houseguest I've ever had here has exclaimed over how well they slept and how rested they feel. Zero exceptions, and we've had quite a few houseguests. Our guest room is also pleasantly cool year-round and the mattress in there is pretty comfortable, to be fair, but I think the extreme quiet is a big part of the restful atmosphere.

On the other hand, my kids are crap at sleeping anywhere except their own rooms. They are really, really not used to hearing noise when they sleep. I have to turn on white noise apps to drown out ambient noise when we leave town.
posted by town of cats at 10:27 AM on July 27, 2016

I used to guide a pretty easy horizontal cave. I always insisted to my partner that I go out last. because after everyone else exited - The Magic Fifteen Minutes of Quiet and Dark.
posted by j_curiouser at 10:31 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"OK I give up what does the asterisk mean?" - I was trying to express the same thing not_the_water did in the next post. : )
I think it would have been very cool if there were no comments, but that probably would have been very disconcerting to infini!
posted by King Sky Prawn at 10:32 AM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Not at all, I live in Finland!
posted by infini at 10:40 AM on July 27, 2016 [14 favorites]

The floor of Death Valley. Miles away from any road. Dusk. I had unpacked my backpack and sat down to watch the last of the sunset when I felt like my ears were ringing. The absolute silence was so jarring it took me several seconds to realize what I was (not) hearing. It felt immense and somehow both calming and frightening at the same time.
posted by not_the_water at 10:56 AM on July 27, 2016

Total silence can actually drive you a bit bonkers. We have an anechoic chamber and we occasionally get requests from like writers and people who want to hang out in there because they think it will help them focus. It's actually so quiet it's freaky and most people don't last more than 10 minutes.

I do have a lot of cochlear implant patients who love to be able to turn their implants off and just have total silence, though, which I totally get.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:08 AM on July 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am sitting alone in an empty house, with in-ear headphones turned off and blocking remaining external sound. (A near-daily experience for me.) I am profoundly aware first, of the sound of my pulse, and second, of the tiny creaks in my shoulder joints as I type this message on a silent touchscreen.

I didn't actually realize I creaked when I typed.
posted by instamatic at 11:13 AM on July 27, 2016

So I don't know if this is something other people notice or not, but from time to time in a busy, crowded environment (a cafe, say, or a bus terminal- or lunchroom, perhaps) full of separate conversations and noise, a spontaneous, collective lull in talking will occur and the environment will grow fairly quiet. Then, just as spontaneously, after about 8 seconds or so, all the noise will resume. I am 42 years old and have experienced this probably 15 or so times in my life. I love it when it happens and I wish there was a name for it. Whenever it occurs, I ask whoever I'm with "Did you hear that? Did you hear how quiet it got?" and whoever I'm with is almost always like "I guess. Whatevs, Bob Regular." But seriously, how are you not impressed by how quiet it just got?!!
posted by Bob Regular at 11:21 AM on July 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I love those lulls in crowded rooms and I always want to hush people when they go back to talking. But, I would love a concrete house or to live in a forest in Finland, that is pretty much my fantasy life. Sometimes I think I am unusually sensitive to sound, because something like a passing truck or construction near my office makes it very difficult for me to think--I wonder why everyone isn't bothered by that. Are they just used to it? Doesn't it make them crazy too?

And yet sensory deprivation, and the silence that accompanies it, can also be used for torture and can equally make people crazy. So I suppose the perfect environment is one where there is stimulation, but not loud noise. Say, a forest, or a monastery;)
posted by epanalepsis at 11:29 AM on July 27, 2016

I have this vague memory of some sort of urban myth or something that those spontaneous silences happen at 20 minutes after the hour.
posted by ernielundquist at 11:31 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sensory deprivation can be a wonderful thing, so long as it's voluntary. Like so many things in life, it can become torturous (and crazy making) if it goes on and on and you can't make it stop.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:34 AM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love it when it happens and I wish there was a name for it.

I've always known it as "an angel is passing", though it appears the french version carries connotations of discomfort or awkwardness halting the conversation.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:34 PM on July 27, 2016

Snopes on the "20 after the hour" superstition mentioned by ernielundquist.
posted by quite unimportant at 12:36 PM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

This was a nice article.
posted by OmieWise at 12:36 PM on July 27, 2016

As Case was picking up his beer, one of those strange instants of silence descended, as though a hundred unrelated conversations had simultaneously arrived at the same pause. Then the whore's giggle rang out, tinged with certain hysteria.

Ratz grunted. "An angel has passed."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:21 PM on July 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've come to appreciate both quiet and a certain kind of boredom, which the description of a brain default mode reminds me of. Both seem to help certain qualities of thought.

Quiet, not silence.. In writing this comment I've heard one small engine plane pass by following the river. It was not loud. I can still vaguely hear the plane receding, in between breaths; you get very attuned to the smallest sounds when there's no background noise.

The main problem with living in a quiet place, for me, is that I listen to much less music, because I'm not using it to block out noise. Active listening is good, but sometimes I think it would be good to have some background music, put it on, and it's too distracting so I have to turn it off.

(Aha, is that distant thunder? Radar map shows a storm 30 miles from here in the direction it seemed to come from..)
posted by joeyh at 1:35 PM on July 27, 2016

from time to time in a busy, crowded environment (a cafe, say, or a bus terminal- or lunchroom, perhaps) full of separate conversations and noise, a spontaneous, collective lull in talking will occur and the environment will grow fairly quiet.

Not exactly the same thing, but once a month my church holds a Taize service, during which we alternate readings and meditative songs. At a certain point, the song fades out and we hold ten minutes or so of silence. It is surprisingly difficult to hold complete silence as a group for 10 minutes. You hear shuffling of feet, throat clearing, paper rattling, etc. But every few moments everyone manages to get in sync and there comes what I like to think of as a "harmony of silence". The group just flows into and out of sync over the course of the 10 minutes, and every transition of the quiet sounds melting into a moment of is sublime.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:29 PM on July 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I work in a loud, busy restaurant. Lots of chatter, lots of clinking cutlery, hard floors and walls echoing it all back. It's both invigorating and, after a few hours, draining. When I get home I like to spend thirty minutes to an hour sitting on our deck, listening to the city breathe. It's far from silent (we do live in the city, after all), but it's a pleasant background murmur that I find soothing. Except for that one guy a block away who refuses to get his muffler fixed and who I know for a fact leaves for work at 2:50 PM -- every day that car blast to life like the Last Trump sounding and shatters my peaceful reverie. I hate that guy.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 5:02 PM on July 27, 2016

A handful of years ago, the threat of a weekend winter storm drove everyone indoors early, and Pittsburgh's South Side was nearly empty of people, in cars or on foot, a very rare occurrence.
There was no wind, and the snow fell straight down. The sidewalk and street had a perfect half-inch of even snow, and whether because of low air pressure or just the near-total absence of cars on the street (you could hear one from several blocks away if it came), it was so quiet I felt like I could hear the snow falling.
It was a magical experience, like a Christmas episode of a tv show.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:04 PM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I live in a large DC suburb, a block off the main drag, within earshot of a major North-South highway and under the flight path of Dulles Airport. The only time it's quiet here is after a major snowstorm. Then it's heavenly.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:32 PM on July 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

And if you do manage to block out the noise, physically or psychologically, you get constant jump scares when someone comes up behind you. The startles themselves are bad enough, but the constant anxiety of knowing they're coming is the worst.

The guy who invented cubicles intended them as a solution to the problem of the type of open offices that were common at the time. His original concept was perverted, though, made smaller and less private, which tainted the whole concept, and now, instead of fixing the implementation problems, many companies have chosen to go back the original problem.

And there is no possible way that it even saves money in anything but the short term.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:18 AM on July 28, 2016

But seriously, how are you not impressed by how quiet it just got?!!

And silence contagious in moments like these ...
posted by eclectist at 9:33 AM on July 28, 2016