The Visible Quiet

The Guardian’s Joe Moran describes the modern, newly-evolving dilemma of specially-ordained “Quiet” spaces, such as Boston’s “Quiet Car” for their commuter lines. Specifically, the dilemma boils down to:

Maitland sees the interruption of silence as an artificial affliction of modernity, but I am not so sure. Certain environments have certainly become noisier: libraries now seem actively to encourage conversation and clatter. But many things are quieter than they used to be: you no longer hear the incessant hammering of the typing pool, and today’s warehouses and factories are places of cathedral-like calm compared to a generation ago.

I share Maitland’s love of silence, although not enough to challenge anyone disturbing me in a quiet zone. But I cannot decide if the desire for it is natural or unnatural in our herd-loving, compulsively communicative race. When I was a student, I happily wrote essays in crowded common rooms; now I cannot write if there is so much as a creaky floorboard in the room above me.

I don’t understand Maitland’s premise that the desire for silence could be manufactured. Ultimately, if silence has been sought by a community at large, the action would seem to be an organically occurring phenomenon.

Moran feels that same skepticism, but he also points further into the real issue:

It is amazing how much noise you can get used to, and then how much silence you can become accustomed to demanding.

There’s an invisible, but very audible line we cross when we move about the world, or the world moves about us. It’s a signal threshold, where the noise floor meets the remaining headroom. These lines are in visible, audible flux. Perhaps more than ever.