Day 7 - The Sound Of Silence

In addition to being one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs (second only to “The Boxer”), the title of this blog is the “something new” I sought today.  I was inspired by a friend.  Earlier in the week, this friend (also a teacher) turned to a particularly gregarious class and told them that they must sit in absolute silence and work for the remaining minutes of the period because, he told them, “you need to know what silence sounds like.”  I laughed when he told me the story, because I know exactly how he feels. In a classroom of twenty-odd teenagers, those moments of pure, unadulterated silence are precious and few. 

Today, I made the conscious decision to do something new.  I attempted to know what silence sounds like.  As I got in my car to drive home, I decided to leave my radio off for the entire drive, and travel in total and complete silence.  I also put my phone in my purse, and decided I wouldn't reach for it - even if it buzzed with a text or phone call. 

Now, I listen to the radio all the time.  In the past six months, I have been developing an increasingly serious relationship with WBEZ.  While some mornings find me engaging in the occasional dalliance with my former flame – Eric and Kathy on The Mix – I spend most hours in my car soaking up every bit of knowledge and culture that NPR offers.  I can honestly say that my level of social, political, and economic awareness has increased exponentially since I started tuning in to 91.5.  I love the smooth, familiar voices of the newscasters and hosts with their wit and charm and cool, alliterative names.  I love the news reports and the opinion pieces, the interviews with bright young bloggers, and the seasoned reporters who interview them.  Most of all, I love the stories – of every imaginable shape, size and genre and in every imaginable voice.  I love my radio, and I never turn it off.

But today I did.  I drove in silence.  Well, almost silence.  I heard with alarming clarity the “thunk” in the undercarriage of my car that I thought only surfaced when I went over speed bumps.  Turns out, those are just the loudest “thunks”, and my drive was punctuated by the infuriatingly random sound of something going bump in the belly of my Honda. 

Forgetting that silence meant I really should remain quiet as well, and irritated by the sea of brake lights in front of me, I broke into Rent’s “Seasons of Love,” or what I know of it, which is basically a smidgen of the chorus (the number of minutes in a year sung more or less over and over again.  It’s like the song that doesn’t end).   After taking a break to listen to the cacophony of clunks under my car, I transitioned to Kelly Clarkson’s “Catch My Breath,” of which I know slightly more than three words.  You can guess which three words I know best and sing the loudest.  My performances were noteworthy in that they reminded me of my urge to fill silence with the sound of my own voice.

I'm very glad I did this “something new” today.  I realize that I spend very few, if any, moments of my day in silence. Apart from the minutes I’ve been sitting quietly instead of snoozing, my day is rarely free of auditory stimuli.  In a way, my radio masking the sound of whatever the heck is wrong with my car mimics the way in which the barrage of noise we surround ourselves with can block us from listening for things that we really need to hear – like our own thoughts, or God’s message for us. 

I’m sure tomorrow I will tune back in to my now beloved WBEZ, but I will try to remember that, like the average class full of teenagers, I need to periodically “know what silence sounds like.”