We canāt make a silenceābut we can be quiet. Music like John Cageās ā4ā33ā, where āsilenceā opens our ears to the smaller, un-orchestrated sounds that always surrounds us, makes me picture layers of sound. Say Iām attending a loud concert (hard to imagine, I know). Audible to me is the sound of the music. Beneath that layer of sound are things close to me that I perceive when the music is quieter: people around me (again, what a concept), my own voice, maybe loud noises from outside. If the musicians, myself, and everyone else stayed very quiet and still, I would hear yet another layer: peopleās clothing and shoes as they shift slightly, my own breath, and distant sounds from outside the space. There is yet other layer, which Cage describes hearing in the quietest place of all: his own blood and nervous system at work.
I wonder why Cage had musicians āperformā the silence during ā4ā33ā rather than having an empty stage. Why have a score that says only Tacet? To me, it seems like heās trying to direct the listenerās awareness. If I see instruments and performers on a stage, I assume a performance is underway, and I listen more attentively. Cage is saying āthis is musicā by situating silence in the mental space that organized sound usually occupies. This means that perception is as integral to making music as sound if not more so.
Although they exist in my surroundings, I canāt perceive the quietest sounds when the band plays. Now riddle me this: if a loud band playing means I canāt hear, cannot perceive the person beside me breathing, is that sound not functionally silenced? My directed attention can make ambient sound into music; Cageās chance music, in my (admittedly very limited) understanding seems to rely on the listener being open to the sounds they hear. Could the opposite be true? Can I render sound āunmusicalā by ignoring it?
At the very beginning of this course, I said that noises are sounds that we find unpleasant, unstructured, or uninteresting. (As an aside, after some of the music Iāve been exposed to this term, I now disqualify āunstructuredā from my definition.) Again, perception is what distinguishes sound from noise. If you will agree with me on that point (which you may not), I would like to add one more layer of perceived sound to the concert (which Iām attending in my most implausible fantasies); this layer is, at times, the loudest of all: thoughts.
SO MANY TIMES have I been at a concert when suddenly I come to my senses to realize that the last five minutes of music were completely lost to such profound musings as āI canāt believe I ate that entire plate of crackers.ā When my friends, more in touch with their senses, ask me if I heard some brilliant passage, I say it was brilliant indeed, though in truth I have no memory whatsoever of having heard it. All ārealā sounds, that is those that can be measured as waves in the world around me, are functionally silenced, inaudible to me during these moments.
Although Iāve been told that the subconscious is in fact listening constantly to our surroundings, even in our sleep, Iād say that in our conscious awareness at least, there is such a thing as silence. Inattention can, and frequently does, erase sound from my conscious perception. Of course, you might say that imagined sound is still a sound, and I would agree with you. This internal noise sometimes deafens me, having as real an effect on my behaviours and feelings as any ārealā sound.
To summarize, there is no totally silent place on Earth; there is always some tiny, quiet sound for us to perceive if we listen, and though we may not listen to any of the sounds around us, we can never truly perceive the “sound” of silence unless we silence our thoughts. The most we can ever do is to turn our attention away from one kind of sound in favour of another.
Further questions that would take more time and research to explore:
- Will it be silent when I die, when my brain no longer perceives or imagines sound?
- If I had no apparatus for perceiving sound, say, if I was born without ears, would I still āhearā my thoughts? Could I use the auditory processing part of my mind to listen to silence?
- In the concert scenario, quiet sounds are silenced by louder ones. Quiet sounds are perceived when louder sounds areā¦silent. So, when the drummer stops playing, am I āhearingā the absence of drums, and if so, could I imagine hearing a soundscape in which even the tiniest, quietest sounds are silenced?
- If I meditate until I cease to think, could I simultaneously ignore the sounds around me, thereby perceiving total silence? Or is it only possible to ignore real sound by thinking more loudly?