O, Hush.

Silence is scarce. In the last few years, there’ve been a slew of articles published entitled “The Praise of Silence.” Publications such as The Atlantic and The Huffington Post have all drawn similar conclusions. Each respective journalist wrote with the rhetoric of catastrophe. The Internet, they claim, has rendered tranquility and serenity obsolete. Good riddance, I say. Writer Ann Medlock, in one such article, quotes a character from the novel “The Lacuna,”

“The radio is at the root of the evil, their rule is: No silence, ever. When anything happens, the commentator has to speak without a moment’s pause for gathering wisdom. Faslehood and inanity are preferable to silence. You can’t imagine the effect of this. The talkers are rising above the thinkers.”

A real worry. Medlock laments how the Twitter, Facebook, and blogs of various makes and models have aggravated this condition. While this is no new idea, it’s a valid point. Comedian Norm McDonald has a bit about how when he was growing up, “the news” was only on TV for a half an hour. He points out that now there’s a 24-hour news cycle which constantly regurgitates old material. “Turns out,” his punch line goes, “They had it right when I was a kid. There is only about 30 minutes worth of news in a day.” McDonald jokingly complains of the trash on TV, but makes a serious point about the auditory rape that the radio, TV, and Internet perpetuate. The media bangs our eardrums. George Prochnik’s new book, “In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise,” argues this obvious point.
Perhaps the public agrees. Director Michel Hazanavicius’s 2011 film, “The Artist,” is the first big budget silent film in recent memory. The movie has garnered box-fulls of critical praise and Oscar buzz. Hazanavicius has re-taught filmmakers to tell a story as once they were exclusively told, with images. I personally learn the most with my mouth shut. Although I also learn with my mouth not shut, strapped to the dentist chair. This is one of the few times I am physically (not culturally) unable to speak. I always learn a tremendous amount. Mostly about the personal life of my dentist and her assistant. My dentist lives a very interesting life, albeit sad and gross. Still…knowledge is knowledge.

Trappist monks, along with other breeds of religious fanatics, have been shutting out the ‘distractions’ of the world and taking vows of silence for hundreds of years. Last I checked they weren’t the most fun people to spend a day with. The curmudgeonly have consistently advocated quiet. Though I cannot shake the idea that enforced silence is a tool of the tyrannical. The absence of voices is the absence of contradictory opinions, and makes dictators everywhere droll. Silence is undemocratic. A tad melodramatic? Let me make a simpler point. One of my father’s most often shouted mantras (after ‘Cut the comedy!’) was ‘Silence!’ As a corporate lawyer this value served him well. Yet for us kids, his ultra-serious disdain for noisy clowning around, as he called it, only made us laugh harder. Am I calling my father a tyrant? Whose wasn’t? For too long those of use who celebrate noise have been as quiet as church mice.

“Sensory Deprivation Tanks,” (SDT) seem tortuous, although they have been extensively studied and shown to somewhat reduce anxiety, stress and depression. Their most basic component? A soundless shell. Comedian Joe Rogan talks about his experience in one such tank, and describes “the total silence” as “the most bizarre feeling I have ever had.” He goes on to say that you eventually “lose your sense of being human.” Personally, this one man’s strange testimony overrides whatever the sterile, generic studies show. God knows what sort of corporate-brainwashing advertising firms are funding the SDT research. In any case, SDT is uncomfortably close to STD. You’re just one letter away from having syphilis. The dead have peace and quiet; the living should accept their war and noise with gratitude.

Think of Marlon Brando’s character in Bertolucci’s film “Last Tango in Paris.” His character, a taciturn grump, somehow seduces, almost unintentionally, a stunning Parisian dame half his age. Why? Well, in part, not parcel, because he refuses to tell her a word about his past. “Tell me your name at least?” she desperately presses in the midst of their affair. “My name?” Brando’s character retorts, “I don’t deserve a name. Call me ______ [incomprehensible barbaric sound].” What’s in a name? Only sound, not music. Rather than reject this strange behavior, the woman becomes even more endeared to him. Certainly this is cinematic exaggeration, but undeniably something true is here. Understatement, Silence’s little sister, is the patron saint of Romance.

The romantic impulse itself is suicidal, and chooses not knife or rope, but words themselves. The ghastly requests that end romance (i.e. “Tell me everything about yourself!”) are the very questions that expedite this end. Self-destroying questions. Uncomfortable reveling in a person’s mystery, we drive at knowing them. Once we know them, we spurn them. The ears, along with the imagination, always undermine relationships. Laconic lovers are the sexiest.

Human silence can be aggravating. For every single Swiss and Queen’s Guard (you know, the ones with big black hats and red coats), there are gaggles of triangle-faced idiots seeking to disrupt their quietude. Why? Because misery loves company? The glacial silence found in nature, on the other hand, both charms and terrifies us. The complete absence of sound is uncanny, feeling uncomfortably close to non-existence. Am I the only one who finds noise-canceling headphones to be somewhat frightening? It’s that all-too-effective way they severe our connection the world. You want an out of body experience? Pop on a pair of Bose. More than smell and taste, perhaps even sight or touch, our hearing grounds us. When Van Gogh ultimately lost his grip on reality, it was his left ear that he sliced off. Why not snip off a finger or gouge an eyeball? both of which seem equally unappealing. Perhaps he started to hear voices…ear-splittingly loud voices.

Silence is a complicated little concept. Love seems to last longest when sown in silence. Composer John Cage’s famous song “4 33,” a conceptual music piece involving no sounds, is an interesting case. Cage’s ‘song’ can now be purchased on iTunes. Silence no longer seems a resource affordable by all. Only available to those with computer access.

People should talk, but only brooks should babble. Pets are good, but have you ever perused a pet store’s sales ledger? It becomes instantly clear that the reticent pets (fish, hamsters) tend to sell better than the ones that everybody knows don’t shut the fuck up (parrots). Dogs go both ways. Those small yippy ones are universally hated, but nothing makes you feel safer than a deep, resounding ‘woof.’ Cats are mostly silent, yet every sane person enjoys the cat’s meow. Films shouldn’t be quiet, unless they are silent. “The Sound of Music” should have been both. Silent farts are deadly, as we all know, yet when we are the farter, the silent ones are preferred. Guns with silencers are more dangerous. The “silent killer” is the scariest. Most inanimate objects should be silent (shoes, umbrellas). Unless you’re walking on gravel in the rain, in which case the opposite is true. Nobody wants to hear a peep out of their seafood dinner, for example, or listen to their sandwich. First dates shouldn’t be silent (though sometimes these are inanimate anyway– you’ve gotta get lucky and unlucky to find that out).

Libraries and public restrooms are better silent. Leaf blowers are consistently too loud, likewise frat girls, sorority boys, lawnmowers, and Christians. People smarter than you can always do with a bit of ‘shut-the-fuck-up.’ Weddings should be full of song and dance, though I wouldn’t say the same for funerals [the Irish do most things backwards, and wouldn’t agree with most of these observations]. Babies should be quiet, especially when they are seated next to you on a plane or at the theater. Mother’s can zip it as far as I’m concerned (mum’s the word!). Politicians should never be speechless. Only idiots are wordless when they play Scrabble. Televisions, not songbirds, should be mute. Why are the adjectives “uncomfortable” and “awkward” so often modifying “silence”? Why crickets? … Why are there so many Helen Keller jokes? And Steven Hawking? Why is the inability to express oneself so funny? Why does a ringing cell phone seem to be the absolute cardinal sin in cinemas, music halls, churches, etc? How come the two memorable songs “Sound of Silence” and “Silent Night” are neither? Why does courtesy depend mostly on what not to say? Why are, as the saying goes, “some things better left unsaid”? Why are ‘silent’ and ‘cancer’ the two most unpopular kinds of treatment? If anyone has the answers to these questions, they’re not talking. They’re writing.