In praise of quietness
May. 22nd, 2006 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus* The red headphones you can see me wearing in recent photos aren't connected to anything. No music flows through them. But they aren't merely cosmetic either. They're "portable peace". When I clap them over my ears, the world becomes a quieter place. And I like quietness.
* Peacefulness isn't merely the absence of sound, it's a way of being, a positive thing, a presence. Just as, in my Wired piece Hell is other people's music, I needed the concept of "roomtone" to show up pumped-in music as an intruder, so we need a concept of positive peacefulness. Low-level indigenous sound is not simply an absence, a blank slate. It's something present, something desireable, something you can hear.
* Last week's debates on the politics of texture raised the question: "How can you be celebrating peace when you're so violent and noisy?"
* I've always liked quiet people. My girlfriends have tended to be quiet, whispery, intimate. The sexiest people are!
* Japanese couples, as I understand it, don't feel the need to talk all the time. They can sit in silence for long periods without there being a sense that "something is wrong".
* Berlin is a very quiet city. I mean, if you want noise, you can find it. But there's a sobriety about Berlin, a tempered quality. In many streets, the loudest sound is birdsong.
* I love how, when it gets quiet, tiny sounds get "loud". That's my favourite landscape of sound.
* Last night I got home with John Talaga and nobody was in. The loft was so quiet! You could hear the wind, and roomtone, and the small sounds of the cat as it scampered about. I enhanced (or slightly spoiled) the poignant roomtone by playing Paul Lansky's "Alphabet Book", a very quiet record I bought in January in Tokyo, and one of my favourite finds this year.
* One day I will write about the vice of "Easy Power". The fact that it's easy to whip people up by cranking the sound up to 11.
* There's a video in the Chinese video art show at PS1 in which a performance artist films himself disturbing the peace on crowded Chinese streets. We see people filing calmly by, then the artist starts screaming and shouting, and people are momentarily alarmed, then continue about their business. It's interesting the first couple of times...
* At the soundcheck for my Tonic gig I asked the engineer to try to keep the levels down throughout our sets. The tendency at rock shows is for noise levels to creep up and up, but if you keep the sound down quite low, attention levels creep up instead. Of course, you miss the body-throbbing physical oomph of loud volume. But, increasingly, it's that sharp, focused, motivated, ultra-sensitive kind of attention I crave from audiences.
* Don't let the noisiest, least attentive person in the audience set the sound levels.
* I find myself slipping my red headphones on at films a lot too. Especially the trailers. The films I like tend to be quiet ones. The quietest film I ever saw was one about Bruce Goff. Goff in the Desert, it was called. It was a sequence of buildings by the visionary architect, accompanied by ambient sound from the buildings. No commentary, so the roomtone was foreground, not background. A kind of ambient film. I loved it, I found it exemplary and very... subversive, somehow. A "quiet revolution".
* Saturday night on the Lower East Side. We tried to find a bar for an after-party. Jesus, this area has got loud! Velvet ropes, security, bars where people simply bellow at each other and bad music clangs and hammers. We had to walk miles, down into Chinatown, to find a place where we could hear ourselves think. There's a range of frequencies and volumes people can communicate within, and once you go outside that everything becomes a bit of an ordeal, a bit uncomfortable.
* There's a whole school of "quiet music", like the The Mountain Record by Yuichiro Fujimoto. And it's interesting how often noise artists turn, sooner or later, to quietness. Like Otomo Yoshihide and his music venue Off Site.
* I notice that people are listening to music on smaller and smaller speakers these days. A lot of people I know just listen to music on the built-in speakers in their laptops. It's a way of getting music quieter.
* There's no shame in being introverted.
* People who love quietness love life.
* Peacefulness isn't merely the absence of sound, it's a way of being, a positive thing, a presence. Just as, in my Wired piece Hell is other people's music, I needed the concept of "roomtone" to show up pumped-in music as an intruder, so we need a concept of positive peacefulness. Low-level indigenous sound is not simply an absence, a blank slate. It's something present, something desireable, something you can hear.
* Last week's debates on the politics of texture raised the question: "How can you be celebrating peace when you're so violent and noisy?"* I've always liked quiet people. My girlfriends have tended to be quiet, whispery, intimate. The sexiest people are!
* Japanese couples, as I understand it, don't feel the need to talk all the time. They can sit in silence for long periods without there being a sense that "something is wrong".
* Berlin is a very quiet city. I mean, if you want noise, you can find it. But there's a sobriety about Berlin, a tempered quality. In many streets, the loudest sound is birdsong.
* I love how, when it gets quiet, tiny sounds get "loud". That's my favourite landscape of sound.
* Last night I got home with John Talaga and nobody was in. The loft was so quiet! You could hear the wind, and roomtone, and the small sounds of the cat as it scampered about. I enhanced (or slightly spoiled) the poignant roomtone by playing Paul Lansky's "Alphabet Book", a very quiet record I bought in January in Tokyo, and one of my favourite finds this year.
* One day I will write about the vice of "Easy Power". The fact that it's easy to whip people up by cranking the sound up to 11.
* There's a video in the Chinese video art show at PS1 in which a performance artist films himself disturbing the peace on crowded Chinese streets. We see people filing calmly by, then the artist starts screaming and shouting, and people are momentarily alarmed, then continue about their business. It's interesting the first couple of times...
* At the soundcheck for my Tonic gig I asked the engineer to try to keep the levels down throughout our sets. The tendency at rock shows is for noise levels to creep up and up, but if you keep the sound down quite low, attention levels creep up instead. Of course, you miss the body-throbbing physical oomph of loud volume. But, increasingly, it's that sharp, focused, motivated, ultra-sensitive kind of attention I crave from audiences.
* Don't let the noisiest, least attentive person in the audience set the sound levels.
* I find myself slipping my red headphones on at films a lot too. Especially the trailers. The films I like tend to be quiet ones. The quietest film I ever saw was one about Bruce Goff. Goff in the Desert, it was called. It was a sequence of buildings by the visionary architect, accompanied by ambient sound from the buildings. No commentary, so the roomtone was foreground, not background. A kind of ambient film. I loved it, I found it exemplary and very... subversive, somehow. A "quiet revolution".
* Saturday night on the Lower East Side. We tried to find a bar for an after-party. Jesus, this area has got loud! Velvet ropes, security, bars where people simply bellow at each other and bad music clangs and hammers. We had to walk miles, down into Chinatown, to find a place where we could hear ourselves think. There's a range of frequencies and volumes people can communicate within, and once you go outside that everything becomes a bit of an ordeal, a bit uncomfortable.
* There's a whole school of "quiet music", like the The Mountain Record by Yuichiro Fujimoto. And it's interesting how often noise artists turn, sooner or later, to quietness. Like Otomo Yoshihide and his music venue Off Site.* I notice that people are listening to music on smaller and smaller speakers these days. A lot of people I know just listen to music on the built-in speakers in their laptops. It's a way of getting music quieter.
* There's no shame in being introverted.
* People who love quietness love life.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 01:53 pm (UTC)If the world was quieter, I'd probably be able to hear the bees coming, but I wouldn't have to because the only reason they're attacking is that they don't like loud noise!
When I tell my friends that I don't like going to concerts where I have to stand, they tell me that I've gotten too old. I don't think that's true, because according to Professor Kawashima from Brain Age (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Age) my brain age is 23. Hm, now that I think about it, I don't think I'd mind the noise and shouting so prevalent at rock shows if everyone were sitting down. At least not so much. Maybe I'm onto something here – this binary opposition of loud and quiet you've been talking so much about lately is a red herring, it's really all about standing music and sitting music.
Today I'm listening to Dr. John's first album (Gris-Gris). It's not *quiet*, but it's music you can sit down to. Or lie down to.
Stay healthy, Momus! Stay healthy!
(Hm, LJ is making me confirm that I am a human by typing in some letters. I'm not sure I approve of how Mr. Anonymous has become a second class citizen on the web these last years)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:11 pm (UTC)Actually, it's not the noise I object to most of all. It's having to shout. I hate shouting.
Anyway, on Saturday I couldn't be arsed, so I went to sit in a room on my own and watched the Eurovision Song Contest with the sound turned off. It was great.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:18 pm (UTC)Let's go to a quiet gathering
Ah, ah, ah, yeah
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:25 pm (UTC)other people's music
Date: 2006-05-22 02:26 pm (UTC)Freedom
Date: 2006-05-22 02:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:39 pm (UTC)I love techno and electronica, but cannot go to any clubs to listen to it because the volume is often too high. I am very sensitive to loud noises- especially high pitched ones. I have been known to leave restaurants when there is a screaming infant or child nearby.
I detest 'small talk' and noise for noises sake. I used to work in Circuit City, and the managers always wanted the audio people to play things at earsplitting volume to make the place feel 'alive'. I was always sneaking over and turning things down, or disconnecting speakers.
There are stores in the mall that I will not go into because of the noise.
And you are right: there is no shame in being introverted. I rather like it myself. I do not own any kind of portable music player- I prefer to listen to the world around me than have it force-fed into my head. The music in my head is my own making. Plus the batteries never die!
:-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:44 pm (UTC)Brian Pressburger, Basingstoke"
(Letter in Frieze magazine)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 02:45 pm (UTC)A lot of people use loud places to be loud themselves. Airplanes are often filled with drunken salesmen whoo-hooing! their way back and forth. With my earplugs in, they almost vanish.
Aahhh.
Turn it down!
Date: 2006-05-22 03:04 pm (UTC)SPOKEN LIKE A -- (sorry) spoken like a fellow pushing 50.
* People who love noise (my child) love life with unrivalled passion.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 03:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-22 03:10 pm (UTC)I think perception of noise can relate very strongly to one's mental health, however. If I'm having a bad day I hear deafening planes on route to Heathrow. If I'm having a good day I hear birdsong.
Or is it the other way around - the noise has a detrimental effect on your mental heath? Probably a bit of both.
Re: Turn it down!
Date: 2006-05-22 03:13 pm (UTC)That's a load of rubbish, Mr Anonymous! A love of noise is not required for a love of life.