When I was in high school, my humanities teacher assigned us the task of creating our own musical instrument from scratch. We were given a month to complete the project. At that point, we were to bring the instrument into school and “play” it for our classmates for a grade.
At 10 p.m. the night before the project was due, I realized I had forgotten to do it. With no time to create something decent, I took an old shoe box and covered it with wrapping paper and brought it to school the next day. When the teacher asked me to play my instrument, I brought it to the front of the class and proceeded to shake it. As I started to return to my seat, my classmates all shouted in protest.
“We didn’t hear anything!” they complained. I explained to them that they had to be really quiet, and then they would hear it. Then, I shook it again. “We still didn’t hear anything,” they yelled. “Oh, I explained, “that’s because my instrument makes the most beautiful sound of all…the sound of silence.”
I received an A on the project, but that’s beside the point. The experience illustrates society’s reaction to silence as nothing, instead of something. Car interiors must be filled with radio sounds, studying must be accompanied by television audio, supermarkets must be enhanced by elevator music, and offices must by infused with white noise. Today, as an adult, I still contend that to be still without noise is to really hear.
