Rick's August Tirade
Noise
I used to be almost unnaturally tolerant of noise. You might even
say I thrived on it.
As a boy, I would be lulled to sleep by the dreamy drone of night
traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, less than half a mile away. Over
the years, I hardly cared if a low-flying jet roared directly
overhead or a fat Harley-Davidson vroomed its way down the road in
front of me. At work, I could endure intrusive public address
announcements by the dozen as I crafted my advertisng copy. It
seemed that no amount of cacophony could ruffle my concentration or
unbalance my equilibrium. I was immune.
Until now. Suddenly, in the high summer of my middle years, I've
discovered the sensory outrage and misery of NOISE. I've been
aurally assaulted, pummeled, throttled, cudgeled and left for dead.
I've been driven to psychopathic revenge fantasies and even
crankiness. I'm ready to turn outlaw, wreak havoc on costly
equipment and face possible incarceration in a minimum-security
prison. Let me tell you about it.
About a month ago I was awakened by a monstrous mechanical
growling outside my window. It sounded like a metallic Tyrannosaurus
rex devouring its prey. Even worse, the growling was accompanied by
several series of alarming, high-pitched electronic beeps at
irregular intervals. BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Then nothing. Then again:
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Silence. Could I drift back to sleep,
perchance to dream? BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. I was awake for
good, and I was not amused.
I glanced at my bedside clock: 6:45. SATURDAY MORNING at 6:45.
What fiends of Beelzebub were these? What could possess any sane
creature to disrupt the gentle dawn with such a savage and untimely
commotion?
I strode to my balcony door and thrust it open. There, in the
former cornfield across the road -- a field once graced by
generations of ring-necked pheasants and red-tailed hawks --
bulldozers and other machines from hell were disemboweling the earth
for yet another yuppie housing project. I was livid. I shouted an
assortment of mild but extremely bellicose oaths at the offending
earthmovers. The commotion ceased. A miracle. Then, two minutes
later, it started up again.
Despite my calls to various municipal agencies, The Noise
persisted -- six days a week, Saturdays included, and impeccably
timed to torment anyone lazy enough to sleep past dawn. Last
Saturday, after another 6:45 wake-up call, I finally reached the
Popeye Point -- the moment at which even a mild-mannered citizen
must declare, in the manner of the immortal sailor, "That's all
I can stands; I can't stands no more!"
Instead of reaching down my shirt for a can of spinach, I
immediately telephoned the police and stated my case as rationally
as possible: "If something isn't done about it, I swear I'll
sabotage their equipment!" Came the reply: "You realize,
sir, that everything you say is being recorded." So now I'd
probably go to prison even if somebody ELSE decided to sabotage the
bulldozers. Actually, I had been thinking more along the lines of
spray-painting the words "Shoot Me" or "I'm with
Stupid" on the sides of the machines. Only as a last resort
would I have considered the use of dynamite or tactical nuclear
devices.
A month has passed since the growling began; during that span I
have become an unwilling connoisseur of noise. Where once I had
tuned it out, I now couldn't help but tune it in. I've become
acutely sensitive to the sounds of those overhead planes,
motorcycles and inane public address announcements that had never
disturbed me in the past. I hear the humming of a refrigerator two
rooms away; I recoil at the rumbling of air conditioners. The
creaking of my computer chair makes me twitch. When Henry, my plump
and generally good-natured housecat, went on one of his nonstop
meowing binges to demand that I refill his dinner bowl (the food
level had dropped to approximately half an inch below the rim), I
could almost understand what demon drives certain despairing young
parents to chuck their crying babies out the window. It's the NOISE,
my friends... the unceasing, unrelenting noise.
Then, in one of those flashes of insight that occasionally make
me grateful for my liberal arts education, I began to wonder what
defines noise as noise... what mysterious and intangible qualities
separate it from mere sound.
The song of a wood thrush on a summer evening is melodious and
soothing to the soul; could anyone classify it as noise? It is
music, and nothing less. The same might be said for the sound of
wind in the trees. Could there be such a thing as PLEASANT noise?
Rain on the roof might fit this category: noise with redeeming
sensory qualities. It transcends noise. So does Beethoven's ninth
symphony -- a stellar example of SUBLIME noise. Thunder might please
the ear from a distance and shock it at close range; its
classification as noise depends on proximity. Wind chimes are music
to some (hippies, children, owners of New Age stores) and noise to
others (dogs, accountants, curmudgeons). Might the definition of
noise be open to personal interpretation... might it be simply a
matter of taste?
I consulted my dictionary on noise: "a SOUND; esp: one that
lacks agreeable musical quality or is noticeably unpleasant."
Hmmm... still entirely too subjective. What committee decides
whether a sound is "agreeable" or "noticeably
unpleasant"? I've entertained the latter opinion of pop music
for several decades, but the public persists in believing otherwise.
I continued. "Any sound that is undesired and interferes with
one's hearing of something." We're getting closer now. The
bulldozers outside my window interfered with my hearing of SILENCE.
Yet another: "Irrelevant or meaningless data or output
occurring along with desired information."
Though it has a vaguely technological odor about it, that
definition pleases me. In fact, it clears the way for me to take
noise beyond the realm of mere sound.
In the weeks since I've become a connoisseur, I've concluded that
noise assumes a multitude of forms -- not all of them audible. We
all know about noise we can HEAR: bulldozers, diesel trucks,
caterwauling cats, opera (sorry, opera buffs), sneezes, squeaky
blackboards, erupting volcanoes and the like. But what about the
noise we CAN'T hear? Some of the most disturbing and disruptive
noise of all is entirely imperceptible to the ear.
Take junk mail, for example. Silent but blatantly noisy. Take the
unpaid bills that form noisy stacks of paper on the coffee table.
Above all, take the ghastly highway strips that flank the main
approaches to most American cities. There the sensitive eye is
greeted by mile after mile of obtrusive fast-food restaurants, gas
stations and auto body shops, decrepit bowling lanes and gaudy car
dealerships, billboards, utility poles, doubly disingenuous
"adult bookstores," cheap motels with neon vacancy signs,
roadside hash-houses and cocktail lounges, sterile office parks and
dowdy strip malls, all surmounted by a jumbled network of overhead
wires and adamant traffic lights. It is a visual cacophony, every
bit as noisy to the eyes as bulldozers are to the ears. One longs
for a view of rolling hills, trees, or at the very least, a
picturesque assemblage of old townhouses with painted brick facades.
But the reality is sheer noise. VISUAL noise.
Another kind of noise assails most of us who work for a living in
the business world. Seated at our desks in our viewless cubbyholes,
we endure a daunting daily procession of assignments, deadlines,
phone calls, interruptions, changing priorities, e-mail messages,
overflowing in-boxes, rumors, meetings, uncooperative colleagues,
more interruptions, more demands... in short, what is commonly known
as stress. And what is stress but MENTAL noise? Noise that
unbalances the nervous system without necessarily traveling through
the ears to get there.
This soundless noise has a remarkable propensity to rattle our
bodies and minds, but there are some who love it. These are the
people who work fourteen-hour days and emerge fresh as laundered
shirts. They've experienced the same noise we have; but to them it's
music, just as a deafening rock concert is music to a crowd of
fanatical fans. As the wise men say, there's no accounting for
taste.
But let's look a little closer. The corporate jocks and rock
hounds have CHOSEN their noise. They've opted to immerse themselves
in it... revel in it... be driven to a kind of hormonal ecstasy by
it. It loses the essential property of noise, because it no longer
interferes with what they want to hear. It's PRECISELY what they
want to hear.
I suspect that these ostensibly happy folks might be choosing one
kind of noise to drown out another kind of noise... an inner noise
that tells them they're empty, unloved, fat, flatulent, dull-witted,
inarticulate, undeserving, untalented, pimply, pointy-headed,
romantically inept, generally inferior, or desperate to belong to a
herd. That, to me, is the worst kind of noise; the noise from
within. It interferes with what we want to hear about ourselves, so
you might call it the ULTIMATE noise. Any other noise is preferable,
even life-enhancing.
Even the sound of bulldozers at 6:45 in the morning? Well, such a
ruckus might be life-enhancing to those who are especially
desperate, and therefore especially easy to please. But as a
connoisseur of noise, I must reaffirm that the sound of bulldozers
at dawn displeases me immensely.
What to do about it? I can sabotage the offending equipment in
the dark of night and risk a term behind bars. (I wouldn't mind
doing time in one of those minimum-security prisons, as long as my
fellow inmates keep their stereos and VCRs turned down to a
tolerable volume.) Or I can choose to cultivate a taste for the
noise. I can learn to love it. I can actually look forward to it.
Then, perhaps, it will no longer be an affront to my senses. It will
no longer be an intrusion. It will no longer be noise.
Is it possible that, with a more generous and conciliatory
attitude, I might one day wake up to the MUSIC of bulldozers?
Not bloody likely. Where did I put the spray paint?
