The Sounds of Silence
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published Saturday February 16, 2013

When was the last time you heard silence? Not the soothing emptiness of the countryside, with its carolling magpies and leaf rustling breezes, but the complete absence of sound?

I’ve experienced true silence just the once, suspended in the watery blackness of a float tank in Sydney. Climbing naked into an isolation chamber with nothing for company but lukewarm salty water is an exercise in sensory deprivation. 

It was a gag – a gift voucher from my Mum wanting to slow me down. I was only 30, but I still remember the mesmerising stillness that sent my brain darting about in bewilderment, straining for input. (There are only two choices in the confines of a float tank: give in to the nothingness, or have an anxiety attack.) I could repress the urge to panic knowing I could escape the tank, but emptying my head of noisy thought was the biggest challenge. Concentrating on the sensations of breathing loosened my grip on time and I emerged an hour later in a state of dreamy calm.

I’ve never again come that close to silence. I’ve tried to find it lying in the yellow stubble of the furthest paddock at the family farm, but the pulsating chorus of cicadas became intrusive, underscored by the thundering of a road train from across the valley. Last October, being laid out on the white slab of a medical imaging suite became the best manufactured silence of the year. I needed a 45 minute bone scan on my foot. Forbidden to move a muscle, I drifted into a trance, spellbound by the gentle purring of the machine. If not for the $500 bill, I’d be tempted to book in again – just for the afternoon nap.

Silence and modern life now seem incompatible. There is supposedly not a single place in Europe where you can sit still for 15 minutes during daylight and escape the noises of mankind. That’s quite an assertion. Whether the truth or exaggeration, we humans have burdened the planet with the incessant racket of our machines.

As I write, it’s night-time and I am sitting at my desk with the sash windows open. The kids are out to it after a late swim at the beach. Their father is in Manila on business. (When people ask what he does up there, I say: ‘He collects folders.’)

It’s tranquil, but still saturated with sound. If I tune my ears, I can hear the faint whirring of the ceiling fan in the kitchen creating an evening breeze. There is a glee club of frogs in the garden celebrating Retic Day. My fingers do a sibilant dance over the keyboard.  A car turns out of our street and revs into high gear. Someone laughs next door. With my eyes closed I can detect the low drone of the fridge and a pulsating sensation in my head. A wave of relaxation washes over me, replacing the effort of listening.

I spend much of my time living outside of myself. If I’m not moderating the squabbles between my children, or trying to have three conversations at once, I’m straining to hear the TV news as I bang about in the kitchen cooking dinner. A dozen things always demand my ears. Even when my body is still, I continue to cartwheel round the inside of my head: racing ahead to tomorrow’s conundrums or fretting over yesterday’s. I’ve heard it called ‘the storm of inward thought.’ I’d prefer to be becalmed.

My favourite time is those minutes before I fall asleep, when the house is  softly breathing, and I’m alone with my thoughts. I bring them before the Bench to be counselled, deliberated and settled, and then I wind down in the deep quiet.

Remember the silence of the classroom when you were at high school? Me neither. But I do recall brief lulls in the chatter when we kids finally knuckled down and the only sound was the scratch of biros on paper. It was stimulated silence: minds on the stretch, neurons firing. (Or, in my case, neurons scattering in confusion during maths.)

Silence is satisfying. Advancing age has given my mum an intolerance for the bedlam of my house. When three kids are banging doors, shrieking and galloping around their nanna, and the thumping music on eldest son’s radio is competing with our conversation, I can see her becoming agitated.

Before long, she’s kissing the kids and searching for her car keys to escape my noisy world. One child at a time is my answer for mum, especially with a two year old who has only two volumes – shouting and yelling.

I’ve made it my goal this year to seek more silence. I need some tranquilising. While my toddler is napping, I’ll try to create a mind-space so soft and still I’ll be able to hear a pin drop. With cork floors here, that should be quite the challenge.