Silence

I had planned to write today on the need for civility in political discussion on social media. I took off my omnipresent headphones, sat down with pen and notebook and noticed what I perceived to be a brief moment of silence, which got me thinking. Letting sleeping dogs lie, actually but not metaphorically, I began to think, then write, but not speak about silence.

Silence is an illusion, unobtainable. Fans whirr, motors hum, pugs snore, hounds whimper while chasing dream induced..what...let's say wombats.

Sitting here, "in silence" I can hear all those things plus my pulse in my ears. And there is something else, a tone, a hum, a buzz. Tinnitus, it's called, "ringing in the ears." I've heard it can drive some mad. Mine is mild, easily forgotten in the face of the regular media onslaught I feel compelled to subject myself to. I checked and I guess that I perceive my ringing to be about 10,000 hz and about 30 dB. Negligible, really, quieter than "room" sound. I mean, the refrigerator just kicked in at 700 hz and about 40dB.

Sound is vibration. The compression and refraction of a medium through space and time.
The way I see it, hear it, suppose it to be, true silence, the complete absence of sound, is a myth, unobtainable. There is even a school of thought, string theory, that puts forth the idea that everything, all matter and energy is comprised of vibrating strings. Not just everything we can perceive, but unfathomable higher dimensions and perhaps other universes. These strings aren't things that vibrate. They can't be, because all things are made of strings, they say. Things are vibration. Everything is sound; light, heat, earth, fire, air and water. And everything else.

So silence is not golden. Gold is not silent.

I've heard (http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/24/) sound described as touch at a distance. We perceive sounds with our minds. The path from vibration to thought is...involved, complex. Vibrations in air move eardrums. Eardrums move the smallest bones in the body, inner ear bones. There are three bones. Two are aptly name hammer and anvil. The third, descriptively called a stirrup, connects to another descriptively named item called the oval window of the cochlea. Vibrations transmitted through this odd, tiny mechanism are propagated through the contents of the cochlea, a briny fluid that is a link back to the salty seas where vertebrate hearing evolved. The twin seas, left and right, bathe tiny hairs that attach to auditory nerve endings. Hairs move in the waves, nerves send impulses to my brain, I hear.

The sounds I hear in silence, I can disregard, one by one. The fans, motors, compressors, sighs, snorts can all be accounted for and ignored. I can put away my pulse, which will be there as long as I am able to perceive sound. All those things accounted for, there is still the sound that is not there, the ringing. It is the present sound of the past. Not caused by hair cells moving, but the opposite. It arises from trampled hair cells beaten down by abuse and neglect, noise of motors, media and mayhem. The hundreds of rock concerts weren't really mayhem, except to the inner ears of the masses. I recall fondly using earplugs to shut out the "room sound" while simultaneously using a helicopter headset to blast the "board mix' through the plugs. 125 dB. I had a meter and checked it myself regularly, back then. As loud as a jackhammer. http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html

But, damage done. Those trampled hairs will never get back up. I will never perceive sounds above 12,000 hz again. Not that unusual for someone of my age and experience.The ringing in my ears is artifact of sound and fury, some significant, mostly signifying nothing.

So, to wrap this up, I'll just be quiet.