Silence can be a bad thing if there is too much of it, but today that is not often the case, for we live in a noisy world.  The postindustrial era promised to turn down the volume, but it didn’t—too often, we are ourselves directly responsible for a lot of noise.  But not all of it, I hasten to say.  So we will have to think about the noise factors for a while.  The subject is negative in the sense that it is a way of getting at something else—namely, silence.  And silence is important as the necessary background not only for conversation, but also for music.  Silence is the dark velvet that sets off the lustrous pearl.

As grammar-school teachers used to say back when they knew something, the etymology of audience is a clarification.  Listeners must be quiet, or otherwise they cannot function as listeners.  So perhaps at this point you are saying to yourself, “OK, so I don’t talk too much—so what?”  So plenty.  I don’t presume that the readers of this journal are talkative and restless.  But it might be possible that some readers who have kindly lent their attention might learn something useful about the dangers of any slippage as far as noise is concerned.

Some noise enters our living space from the outside: traffic noise, for example.  There is a certain background also from inside: vibrations, electrical hums, an indefinable presence that we are long since used to.  But beyond that is the noise pollution that we permit or even actively pursue, as I have noticed many times from respectable and intelligent people—and why not?  The worst noise pollution is the one we pay for and actually promote.

If the conventional living room is the room where we receive guests, and also the room where the family sits and talks, then why would anyone put a television there, when it contradicts the spirit and the letter of hospitality and of family?  There are few Americans who did not get this wrong 65 years ago, and ever since.  The environment of Ozzie and Harriet has now metastasized into a nightmare of disconnection, as each “family” member stares at his smartphone or what have you, probably planning his transition.  If any sound is projected for all to hear, it is from the Big Screen, booming as the vocal fry of the young women clashes with the other voices of spurious authority—the talk shows are torture to listen to and amount simply to verbal assault.  They are a headache with few exceptions, but not the only one.

The other migraine would be the multiplication of voices in the room already filled with voices.  Babel rules, as thought attempts feebly to assert itself.  The clash of sounds, not the clash of ideologies, is an impossible but routine hubbub, one in which orderly procedure, good manners, and due consideration are all impossible.

The situation is normal—standard practice multiplied by millions.  But now that we have imagined the talk show at home and its barbaric nature, let’s imagine music at home.  Music is different, but not altogether so.

Back in the days when Father Knew Best (I pause for your laughter), there was the cabinet record player, and what was played was for everyone in earshot to listen to.  But no sooner had that been established than there was a problem.  The promblem was the creation of a segmented market for teenagers, and special music for them that had to be reserved for their own rooms and special record players for their 45 rpm discs.  And so the music (some of it striking) was a political statement of organized yet differentiated noise and a fracture or structure in the home comparable in subtlety to the Berlin Wall.

But lo and behold!  In the Augenblick of a generation, the former teenagers were suddenly grownies or groanies who had their own young ones, but whose musical heritage had been powerfully shifted, and by that time, the politics of musical youth had become as explicit as we have known it since.  Musical youth, I must concede, doesn’t look so young when it is over 70 and the drugs have taken their toll.  Ancient youth must have its fling and another tour (not yet a farewell!) for the Mickster and old wrinkly Keith.

Today we have a complex situation that is challenging and even embarrassing.  All I am trying to indicate, though, is that a destructive weakness and indulgence for noise, and the consequent disorder of perceptions, can be dealt with effectively, if the will is there.  All I am saying is, one voice at a time, please!

Once in the dear dead days beyond recall, it was thought to be rude to interrupt, and for good reason.  But today it may be an even greater breach of the social contract not to interrupt.  “Wait!  Stop!  I can’t hear you!  Turn off that grotesque broadcast and that transitioning gender calamity and start over again!”  We can’t all speak at once—we can’t speak at all if the bellowing media freaks are not silenced.

But if those freaks are silenced, then all is changed, changed utterly: A chance for beauty is born.  And more, for the opportunity can be shared, and it should be.  For the only thing better than listening to good music is listening to it with someone else or even with a gathering of the enlightened—that would make it chamber music, if you like.  And if there is a more superb intimacy, then find it if you can.

But that is just it, just the thing.  I long ago realized that there is no such thing as background music, or at least there shouldn’t be.  If there is background music, turn it off—you don’t need it and shouldn’t tolerate it.  If it is foreground music, then by all means, give it your complete attention.  The whole idea of background music has been dreadfully abused.  For there is an obsession today with destructive practices that are highly revealing—absurd perversions of good sense are actually promoted, as though a physician would say to you, “Smoke more!  Smoke all you can afford!  It’s good for you!”  This is pretty much what we hear from YouTube as students are advised to use classical music as a study aid.

3 HOURS Classical Music: Best Mozart

Concentrate Study, Better Learning,

Mozart Effect—Spiritual Moment

Yeah, well, I like Mozart too, but I have hardly ever seen or heard a worse piece of advice than that one.  Much better advice would be to do one thing at a time—never multitask if you can avoid it.  I do believe that listening to Mozart is one of the best things you can ever do, but not while you are studying for a math test!  Isn’t it a bit much to encourage students to study badly, and then associate Mozart with the result of “Concentrate Study”?  Improper uses even of the best music can be harmful—and these errors are part of the system of malpractice and incompetent authority.  And this system rests within the enveloping incursion of a confusion of voices—a babble of centrifugal discourses.

The paradox of today’s opportunities, as with YouTube, is that a traditional education is the only way to know what the advantages are.  If you know some history and some literature and have research skills, then the internet can be valuable.  But if you don’t have any perspective or discriminating power, then you will be overwhelmed or even victimized.  But perhaps we should not leave this subject without a declaration that Mozart is somehow not a study aid—quite the opposite.  But he and his work are themselves a great object of study!  And perhaps this is a subject to which we can address ourselves one day—but in the meanwhile we must recur to our advocacy of the creative power of, and the need for, silence.

For there are advantages for the individual in the realm of silence, and I think most people will have no difficulty in recognizing them.  One of these advantages is that in silence, you can hear yourself think—you can find your voice.  I would never try to write, for that reason, except from a condition of silence—and I mention this because we were considering students, who are called on to write.  The other advantage of silence, of course, is that only from such a condition can we apprehend and appreciate and even analyze on the wing such music as comes to our ears.  We can best appreciate our great debt to music and musicians when we consider the gift of music to be a beneficent and welcome suspension of silence.

So I want to encourage my readers to be masters of their environment, and not to be mastered.  I recommend that they refuse to mix modes and voices and noises.  I have every reason to believe that they can take advantage of their own opportunities and create a platform for themselves from which they can make their own judgments.  Words can be so determinative, and music so evocative, that we can afford no lapses of attention as we try to comprehend arguments and align ourselves with imaginative musical realms.  For just as we would not knowingly permit the invasion of our bloodstream unless it was medically required, neither should we suffer the pollution or vexation of our mind-stream—consciousness itself.