The introduction to George Prochnik's In Pursuit of Silence sets the author up as a cranky old killjoy, despite his protestations. A self-confessed quiet freak, Prochnik is more obsessive than most in his quest for quiet:
I've snitched on contractors who started work early. I've battled neighbours who hold large parties - and befriended them to get into their parties as a way of trying to befriend the noise itself. I've worn so many earplugs that if they were laid end to end they would probably extend all the way around a New York City block.
Yet the key to this book's success is to be found in the second sentence above - Prochnik is less opposed to noise itself than in praise of silence and the diversity of (moderate) sound, and is both realistic and adaptable, again as the sentence above demonstrates, in how best to make sense amid the noise of contemporary urban life.
Prochnik's journey then is personal, and it's this modest approach, combined with his self-deprecating personality and an awareness of the futility of his mission, that makes his book such an understated joy. We follow his travels among the freaks obsessed with both noise ('boom car' enthusiasts, audio marketing execs and sonic weapon manufacturers) and silence (monks, quakers and agoraphobes) and realise how similar they are - both sensitive to sound in one way or another. Having not read Steve 'Kode 9' Goodman's Sonic Warfare I wonder how much overlap there is in the sections on the military and deterrent use of sound. He notes that the first use of Muzak in the workplace was soon stopped by unions who viewed it, rightly, as an incentive to speed up the pace of workers. Prochnik also notes the effects loud music has on shopping, eating and drinking and how this has had a major impact on the retail and restaurant industries, but his assessment as 'worrisome' the way that 'acoustic stimulation heightens the effect of MDMA' is naive and misguided.
Interesting too is the currently-defunct-but-bound-to-return phenomenon of 'Audiac', audio analgesia. Once used widely and successfully by dentists and in birthing clinics, Audiac therapy involves the use of high level sound by subjects experiencing mild pain. Apparently contemporary firm Sound Pain Relief is looking into reviving this practice, which would seem to work as a sensory distraction much like a sonic form of the vibrating Tens Machines used during labour.
Where I found myself warming most to Prochnik and his mission is where he describes his love of the richness of sound to be found in quiet places. He repeatedly echoes John Cage - and quotes him - in emphasising that true silence doesn't exist, and his time spent in the Japanese gardens in Portland, Oregon made me recall the incredible sonic experiences I'd had in gardens in Japan.
Unlike in Western landscape design where a single structure serves as a focal point, a Japnese garden will present myriad centres of attention: stepping stones, pines, a lantern. All the elements are presented: the movement of branches, the sound of wind in the branches, our own movement.
After visits to an expo on soundproofing, through the bureaucratic malaise of European 'Noise Maps' and on architectural soundwalks with the deaf, Prochnik's final plea is for governments to recognise the value of silence and to lobby for the creation of more silent spaces: parks, pocket parks, and church-like places of 'silence-worship'. This is the most easily achievable outcome one could envision in the war against noise, and certainly the most positive, if somewhat resigned: an understanding of the necessity of noise within contemporary capitalist society and the futility in opposing the true creators of noise: marketing and the military.
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