Television from the adjacent room blasts till nearly midnight. Then follows the upbeat music from some unidentifiable source, the tavern, or the floor above, one can’t be sure. The wooden panels filter nothing. Noise creeps along the walls, the planks, the bed frame. Phone conversations. The cats screech and throb in a spasmodic, quasi-ritualistic proceeding. The hounds stare with disdain. The vultures patrol the littered alleyways. The motor-taxis hover directionless. The baby ceaselessly cries.
Early-hour construction work: hammer thrusts, drills, dust, debris, deconstruction. More baby cries. The former fosters a pleasanter sense of machinery, like the coffee roaster, the smithy, the coal factory. The latter is hopelessly irritating.
Acting simultaneously, the sources blend together into a union: less acute, though mostly discordant. But on that rare occasion the union acquires a harmonious character. It follows the spirit of Free Jazz. Clash, resolution. Harsh tension, then reconciliation. Dissonance followed by consonance. Crescendo, decrescendo.
It’s frequent: to be around the noise, sleep, wear ear plugs, earphones, earphones atop the plugs, or without. The body adapts, awakes, sleeps, regains consciousness, sleeps, and time and time again. Don’t stress: a sure way to lose energy and sleep. Sources of even acute noise fall well within the boundaries the body is equipped to handle. It can manage. But we tend to react adversely, amplify emotions, attach unnecessary meaning, fabricate.
Many prefer noise to silence: if not from the street, then the loudspeaker; if not the loudspeaker, the smartphone. Not Free Jazz, not even Jazz, not New Orleans, not Trip hop, as we grow particular with the nature of our noise.
Exactly how much premium need one pay for silence? For one must inevitably pay such a premium, just as one does to avoid mobile technology, to avoid connectivity, the metadata, the litter, the sugar, the avaricious consumption.
Silence is a luxury, and many voluntarily forego it, exchanging silence for noise, a raw commodity, poor means of commerce. Noise has been gaining traction for millennia. Noise is winning. For entropy is the natural course.
It’s easy to convert silence into noise. The silence of one does not inhibit the noise of another. But not vice versa. A single adverse element suffices to compromise the entire vast silent plain.
It’s everywhere: at home, on the streets, at restaurants, at the patio, at the convenience store, even at the boutique cafe. Perhaps the sepulchral settings can still provide some solace.
There’s vested interest in noise, in the filling of the perfectly content emptiness with viral substance, in converting the less into the more. Straightforward, such a path, for entropy is the natural course.
The reacquisition of silence, however, demands ingenuity. Should the noise not naturally dissipate, the energy channeled for other, hopefully better uses - you’ll likely resort to more noise for the two sources to either eradicate each other, or to clash into an essence of dissonant musical fusion I’ve earlier spoken of.
Deconstruction. Disarray. Degeneration. Decadence. Entropy.
Questions, comments? Connect.