Tame the Silence

In the acclaimed silent film The Artist, there is a scene in which the hall, welcoming silent film star George Valentine, bursts into applause. But the audience does not hear their sounds, just as they do not hear the cries of “Bravo!”. This disparity evokes a strange sense of separation from the powerful wave of emotion that we see on the screen. After all, we hear only silence.

Anthropologist and sociologist David Le Breton, author of The Anthropology of Silence, believes that noise, sounds, like an invisible screen, isolate us from a potentially dangerous world and give a temporary sense of security and control over what is happening. Silence, on the other hand, crystallizes the flow of time, frozen and at the same time infinitely long (1). Psychoanalyst Marie Romanens clarifies: “Silence, like a white screen, refers us to our unconscious.” And this contact, as we know, is not always pleasant.

Fear of the void

Physicists will say that silence is a sound with a power of 0 decibels, which does not exist outside of specially equipped acoustic rooms. Even a barely perceptible breath of wind high in the mountains produces a sound of 10 decibels. Whether we realize it or not, our own body also “sounds”: rumbles in the stomach, air passes through the respiratory tract, heart beats – this is especially audible in moments of fright or physical exertion. Even when we read to ourselves, the words sound in our minds. “So the feeling of silence is subjective,” says phoniatrist Elena Pavlenko. “It’s just that our ears are used to constant stimuli.”

Be that as it may, silence speaks to our unconscious and can evoke both a soothing association with the underwater world and a frightening picture of a deserted dungeon. “There is much more noise in the dungeon than in the world of the deaf!” smiles the French actress Emmanuelle Laborie, deaf from birth. For her, silence is a place with high humidity and strong smells. In fact, silence hypnotizes, confuses or frightens us precisely because it deprives us of our usual sound reference points. “In modern society, silence is alarming, as it indicates a malfunction, a failure in the operation of a machine, a cessation of the transmission of information,” says David Le Breton. Silence disturbs and arouses suspicion, as does whispering. What do they want to hide from me? Why this silence? What does she mean? Emmanuelle Laborie has associated noise since childhood with light and color, and silence is dark for her like night – this is the time when she could not communicate with her parents.

Someone cannot bear the silence of a large country house, and he turns on the radio. Some use the soporific murmur of the TV instead of a lullaby. “The background noise is soothing, reminiscent of the situation in which we often found ourselves when we were small: the voices of adults were gentle, measured, and therefore soothing,” Elena Pavlenko adds.

The absence of sounds brings us closer to ourselves. “That is why it is so difficult for many of us to be in silence for a long time,” says the psychoanalyst. – At such moments, we again feel the seemingly forgotten emotions and experiences: anger, sadness, anxiety or confusion – and the most ancient, archaic fears return to us: loneliness, abandonment, death. Silence is especially powerful for those whose mother, in the words of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, was not “good enough.” But during a psychoanalysis session, it is precisely this discomfort that helps patients turn to their unconscious, which stores the most acute, most painful experiences, and in the psychoanalyst’s office, in a safe environment, relive them, stop depending on them.

sensitive hearing

And yet we need silence. “Night sleep at noise levels below 38 decibels stimulates renewal processes and allows all systems in our body to truly recover. Noise above 60 decibels interferes with rest. And if it is constant, it can lead to overwork, irritability, deterioration of memory and attention, and even gastritis caused by auditory stress. Not to mention insomnia, ”Elena Pavlenko lists. Solution? Measure the noise level in your bedroom at night (many companies do this). And if necessary, then install a triple-glazed window, move equipment to another room (computer, air humidifier, and so on), hang thick curtains (fabrics absorb sounds), use earplugs … In the daytime, auditory fatigue can manifest itself as a feeling that cotton wool is in the ears . In this case, the otolaryngologist recommends using headphones: put them on for 20-30 minutes. After spending two hours on a crowded street, in a nightclub, or in a construction site where noise exceeds 90 decibels, this is a must.

We are so accustomed to the noise that we no longer notice how the refrigerator works or cars pass by outside the window. So we need time to tame silence. To do this, you should walk more often in the forest or park, practice qigong or yoga and turn down the volume of the radio in the car and the sound of the TV, and use headphones in the subway …

“When we lose touch with inner silence, we lose touch with ourselves,” says philosopher Eckhart Tolle. “So, we lose ourselves in this world” (see “Learn more”). It is important to learn how to place pauses in the surrounding soundscape. They are necessary in the same way as pauses in a piece of music. In precious moments of silence, which is never absolute, listen to the sounds around you. How clocks tick, sparrows chirp, closet doors creak, legs rub against each other when walking. If you develop your hearing, then anxiety and fear of loneliness will decrease, and moments of sound asceticism will acquire a sacred meaning. This will help you find yourself. And let’s not forget the incessant internal chatter that overwhelms our thoughts. Through meditation, we can learn to ignore them in order to achieve inner silence. Without a doubt, the most fulfilling of all.

1. D. Le Breton “Anthropology of silence” Théologiques, 1999, № 7/2.