Our place is usually noisy. Most of the time at least one TV is on even if none of us is there to watch it. If TV’s not on then some music is on somewhere or else the radio is playing with somebody talking. It’s rare for there to be silence in the house. Even when it seems like nothing’s going on there will be the heating or air conditioning or the refrigerator.
But every now and then it will be quiet inside. The door or a window will be open and sounds in the distance can be heard. Especially at night those sounds can make me think of long-ago times and places and I’ll get all nostalgic or something.
Do you have similar experiences with near-quietness and distant sounds? Which ones do you like to hear most? Least?
Some I can identify:
train whistles
trains cars coupling
dogs barking
strange birds like owls, doves, crows
sirens of various types
machines like lawn mowers, drills, saws, weed eaters, leaf blowers
beeping from trucks backing up
car alarms
random traffic
The most pleasant are just random “night sounds” and the most annoying are “busy noises.”
Just how often can you experience Total Silence and how long does it last?
I live in a reasonably quiet place: dead-end road, limited traffic, one neighbor with a dog. When wind and weather are right I can occasionally hear faint sounds from trains on a track about a mile away.
But I’m not sure if I experience much in the way of Total Silence. There is nearly always some detectable noise from wind, birds, animals, insects, distant traffic, etc.
I know this is common, but I’ve never managed to see why it would be better than having the TV off. What’s the benefit?
I know what you mean - distant sounds sometimes make me feel really weird inside. Almost any sound can be pleasant to experience from far away, even if it would be intolerable close by - pneumatic drills used by road repair contractors, for example - if it’s going on just outside your window, it’s enough to make you tear your hair out, but if they’re barely audible in the distance, they turn into something interesting and soothing - as much so as birdsong.
As a general rule at our place, if the TV is on somebody is there in front of it. But there are those times when whoever is nearest the TV is asleep and just didn’t turn it off, or else it’s just on “for company” to avoid the silence. If I’m alone in the house – doesn’t happen all that often – I’ll turn everything off except those automatic things like AC and refrigerator and bask in the silence. As often as not I will drop the volume level down to almost quiet just to watch the picture, especially for sports and such.
The best times to appreciate silence (and darkness) are after a power outage. Most often when we lose power it’s after a storm and we fumble around for candles and flashlights. About the time we locate them the power comes back on.
However, once in a while the power will stay off for several hours and in those times we get to appreciate (at least understand) how much we are at the total mercy of the electrical power we take almost for granted. Scary!
We get a good amount of reasonable silence, really (it helps to have plaster walls) although I don’t think there’s anywhere in town you wouldn’t hear trains. When I lived at home with my parents we were close enough to the fort to hear all kinds of large and small arms fire, and bugles in the morning and night. I kind of miss it.
We are lucky to have very little noise around here, since our little town, if you can call it that, is pretty much ‘out in the country’. It is reasonably quiet here almost all the time, and it is very pleasant! We have lots of bird sounds, which are fine and welcome, as are the sounds of coyotes.
We do hear the neighbor’s dog barking incessantly, sometimes…kids roaring around on their three and four wheelers, etc. But, it doesn’t last long, and we can deal with it just fine.
I do have an issue with a place called ‘Hog Slat’, which is about a mile or so from here, though. They manufacture concrete slats for hog farms, and their vibrating tables drive me the rest of the way insane when I hear it.
I can hear the low-frequency ‘noise’ that they put out. That is the one type of sound that irritates me to my last nerve!
Since we’ve moved down the road from our old place, it seems like it isn’t so bad now. I have no idea why. I’m just thankful I don’t hear it much anymore!
Well, nonacetone, I do sympathize with you for the “Hog Slat” nuisance. Being close to regular noise-producing operations must be hard to adjust to. How do you cope? Music? TV?
For me, the most nerve-jangling noise comes in the fall when the neighborhood leaf blowers crank up, sometimes several at once, right when I’m wanting to hear the football game(s). I can cope with the hammering and chain saw racket because the noise is less insistent and they usually don’t overwhelm the senses the way leaf blowers do.
At the other end of the spectrum as far as constant noises go, being near the surf, a waterfall, even a fountain with water sounds continually playing in the background, can be about as soothing as the Total Silence that so rarely comes along. My wife had a series of those Environmental records and tapes when we met and they were a regular feature of our going to sleep rituals. Especially one she made of about 10 minutes worth of thunderstorm leading into The Doors’ Riders on the Storm. I could usually hear the beginning riffs of the music before drifting away.
Nowadays she will order things like windchimes, waterfalls, rain forest, etc., stuff on CD and will occasionally put them on to “break the silence.” It’s a toss-up as to which sound(s) or the total lack of any is more pleasing to me. But she’s almost always listening to something.
If the wind is right, and I go outside and listen for it, I can hear the spillway from a reservoir about 2 miles away. Only in the summer though.
Sometimes we will hear the compression brakes on a semi coming down the pass.
Though my hearing is kind of going to hell, I do listen for special things. Did the dogs go out the doggy door? Or are they back on their way in.
Is the well pump running? When was the last time we used water?
In the winter, it’s real quite.
Except, sometimes I hear a distant avalanche but only if I’m outside. That’s kind of cool. It’s sort of a whoommmp. I hear that perhaps once a year. Timing is everything there.
When I was a little kid, I could see my local grade school out my bedroom window in suburbia. In the lazy days of summertime vacation, taking a nap I could hear the chain hanging off an empty tetherball pole, it would “ding” slowly and quietly in the breeze now and then. For some reason it was nice to hear. Much, much better than the pavlovian alarm-bell that would clang when Recess was over, “back to the salt mines, kid…”
For lazy background noise, nothing is better than an old AM radio tuned to the local oldies station, real low. and low on the dial. For some reason AM audio will knock me out in a nap faster than anything.