A quest for silence: Is that too much to ask?

“For someone like me who works in an open public space, the silence found underwater is so precious,” says Clémentine, a bank executive who has taken up swimming in the last four years. “Finally, I can be in a place where nobody talks to me! Nobody and nothing else matters, we concentrate on ourselves and our senses. We keep quiet while our body does the talking. We learn to listen better.”

From earmuffs to more complex meditation sessions, any means to isolate ourselves from the ubiquitous noises every day shouldn’t be taken for granted. At one point, some of us have fought the urge to reprimand the passenger who is shouting at his phone in a tightly packed public transportation during rush hour. Or maybe you have been awaken from your slumber by the inconsiderate neighbours who like playing loud music on Sunday mornings. Sometimes even shopping trips overwhelm us because of all these music they play in retail stores.

As French author Jean-Michel Delacomptée puts it, too few initiatives have been taken to limit noise pollution. The excess decibels surrounding us have adverse consequences on our health. The quest for silence is a real necessity, both physiologically and psychologically.

Meditation

Since it is basically impossible to stop external noises, it’s time to try an internal approach: meditation. It aims to teach us silence by not paying attention to excessive flow of information and other things that don’t always have a positive effect on the mind.

“Once a month I turn off my cell phone and my computer and I meditate in silence for much of the day,” says Louise, a communications consultant. “Shutting up and shutting out the world this way is a very intense experience that helps me to recharge and regain my serenity. But this is not always as easy as it sounds. Sometimes, you feel uncomfortable and you just want to turn everything on just to be in the loop with everything.”

Silence! Let’s Eat!

In September 2013, a restaurant called ‘Eat’ in Brooklyn, New York created a monthly silent dinner. The idea behind the no-speaking rule is for guests to focus on the taste and aesthetics of the dishes instead of the conversation. The conceptual restaurant is so successful that now you will need to book the restaurant six months in advance!

In Paris, the first silent dinner was in June 2014 in the lobby of the Exhibition Centre of Porte de Versailles. Organised by Coco Brac La Ferriere, it was attended by over 200 guests invited to remain silent in order to experience this unique moment.

For Laurène, a graphic designer who was among the happy invitees, the whole night was rather surprising. “I went in thinking that silence was the lack of noise… but not at all! In fact, it is much more that. There are very different silences. During the evening, there were joyful silences with chuckles, but also heavier, more nervous kinds of silence. It was funny to watch how the other guests were apprehensively silent: eyes open or closed, making annoying faces, falling asleep or being fidgety. The meditation exercise was the punch line of the night, it allowed us to focus on the present, on our bodies, what we had on our plates,” she said. “But I must say, after three hours of silence, time seemed to move on very slowly.”

Zero decibels — a utopia?

While some are waiting upon a day of silence, others went ahead and created tranquility. US scientists from Minneapolis built the anechoic chamber. “Anechoic” meaning “echo-free” absorbs 99.9% of sounds. When behind the robust vault-style doors of this chamber, the only things you hear are noises from within: heart rate, air passing into the lungs, blood flowing in the veins or joints squeaking with every movement. Yet, according to those who had tested the anechoic chamber, even these internal noises are disturbing. No one has managed to stay inside for more than 45 minutes.

On the other side of the world, the latest campaign of the Finnish Tourist Board was launched to go with the country’s beauty of silence. Finland is a place where there are plenty of lakes but few people. Meanwhile, the Selfridges department store in London has launched an operation called ‘no noise’, which allows customers to enjoy a break from shopping in a quiet room.

Noise-combatting gadgets worth waiting for

Thankfully for us, some quiet addicts have innovative minds and have come up with technological solutions to try and bring back silence in our lives.

1. The phone that emits perfume. Japanese company Scentee invented a mobile phone that emits lavender, coffee, or strawberry fragrances instead of a ringtone.
2. The window-filter. First it was the ultra-quiet hair dryer, and then it was the window-filter. Technofirst came up with a technology that lets windows filter out car noises and other sounds from outside but lets you hear birds chirping.

Maureen Diament