How We Became So Noisy
Someone recently asked me to word associate into a sentence the things I think about when I think about summer. I came out with this:
I lay in bed and watch the ceiling shake off plaster scraps when a car passed by blasting rap music or Harleys with dummy pipes warn an empty road of a biker present.
For years, I have had evolving theories of why people needed to be so loud. They themselves, when pressed for an answer, have produced reasons of varying plausibility. “My motorcycle is loud because drivers never pay attention on the road. With cellphone usage, I need every help I can get to make sure they know I’m there, in case they decide to change lanes without looking,” a biker said. “The chicks dig the rumble,” another said.
Then you have the suburban boys who plug up their ears and drive around with all the windows down, blasting rap music as if amplitude could somehow be Midas-converted from suburban comfort into street cred.
Everything grows larger in one’s own imagination.
When boomboxes were all the rage in the 70s and early 80s, I had a notion that airspace was being marked as a territorial right for those who were disenfranchised: It was a way of saying, “you can’t sit in your brownstone and pretend I’m not here.” I still believe there’s a measure of this in the need to make one’s presence felt. After all, everyone loves a bit of attention, no matter how he or she may deny it.
Of late, I am beginning to see our culture’s involvement with noise as an attempt to eradicate the surrounding din. Fighting fire with fire, the answer comes in the form of a tower of Babel, ending in more babble. While it sounds unlikely, there’s quite a few examples of how we seek to dominate the competition through largesse, as opposed to rendering their scale invalid by seeking alternative measures. The increasing size of SUV’s on American highways in the name of safety, the increasing volume of cinema movies in place of an actual plot, the supersize burger. More is not only better, more makes the previous version less good. In doing so, however, one is validating, thereby establishing the created system as a reliable indicator of achievement.
How do the folks who chose not to participate answer this escalating war of decibels?
While the scale is absent, we can look to economic theory for relief. Those of us who treasure our silence as gold will be able to cherish in the equally improbable notion that the unsaid can become more golden.
After all, demand goes up as supply diminishes.
©2005 Pristine Ann Gee
