Librarians Manifesto for Silence
Reading David Toop’s (one of this writers favourite authors & musicians), review of Stuart Sim’s ‘Manifesto for Silence’ I was so impressed & in total agreement that I felt I should lift huge chunks of it & upload it here as it is so relevant now to our crazy lives.
I step out into the garden to discover strange, captivating silence, so I decide to read a book outside. Minutes later I sit down & hear, at the edge of perception, a disturbance. Now it has caught my attention, I can’t ignore it, so gradually it moves to the forefront of my hearing where I can comprehend the noise as a distant car alarm.
This continues until something else takes over, or the alarm stops.
My book lies unread, I can’t concentrate due to the colonisation of my attention, by this frantic, pernicious racket. This is one of the difficulties of noise.
WHO research suggests that excessive noise can trigger heart disease by increasing sustained levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline & noradrenaline.
Noise drives me nuts: local council days of mowing & pruning; police helicopters that shake the windows; motorway roar spreading over miles of countryside; high-ceilinged bars full of glass, metal & shouting oafs; machine noise in rooms that are supposed to be silent; drunks conversing in the street at 4 a.m.; somebody listening to the thin residue of a tune on their mobile in a so-called quiet coach on a train; amplified announcements telling us to watch our bags.
Just thinking about noise is a health risk.
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