Silence: In the Age of Noise

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I’m old enough to remember being deeply bored during my childhood: in a 70s home, once children’s TV had finished and you’d read all your books, it really was possible to be very, very bored. Brighton เมืองชายทะเลแสนสดใสทางใต้สุดของเกาะ เราปักหมุดว่าจะไปหน้าผาริมหาดชื่อดัง Seven Sisters ให้จงได้ แผ่นดินตั้งตระหง่านกับท้องทะเลเมื่ออยู่เคียงกันนั้นงดงาม และคุ้มค่าที่จะไปแม้ต้องเสียเวลาเดินทางจากในเมืองเป็นชั่วโมง

On a sailing trip in the spring of 1986, pushing towards Cape Horn off the coast of Chile in the South Pacific Ocean, I was reminded of this. Early one morning, while alone on night watch between midnight and 4am, the world was dead silent. But then, I heard a sound that seemed like a long, deep breath just west of the boat. I had no idea what it could be. I turned 90 degrees in the direction of the sound and spotted a whale just off the starboard side. A mere calling distance away. In a way, silence is the opposition to all of this. It’s about getting inside what you are doing. Experiencing rather than overthinking. Allowing each moment to be big enough. Not living through other people and other things. Shutting out the world and fashioning your own silence whenever you run, cook food, have sex, study, chat, work, think of a new idea, read or dance.* Kagge also tries to use Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" to boost his case (weird, as music, including that song, is somewhat of a sound-based phenomenon), and says things like, "I have more faith in Steve Jobs as a responsible father than as a visionary marketing genius" because apparently Jobs "limited his own children's access to Apple products." Lol okay. So Kagge has really done his research on Jobs, then. They lie there in silence, looking no different, more or less, to the way they were the last time I saw them, 22 years ago. Erling สวมหมวกหลายใบ หนึ่งในนั้นที่ทำให้เขาเป็นที่รู้จักคือหมวกนักเดินทาง เขาเป็นคนแรกของโลกที่เดินกว่าแปดร้อยไมล์ไปยังขั้วโลกใต้ตามลำพัง ขั้วโลกใต้ไม่มีสิ่งมีชีวิตอื่นคอยส่งเสียง ไม่มีต้นไม้ มีแต่น้ำแข็ง และภาพฟ้ากว้างๆ กับแสงอาทิตย์ที่ยาวนาน มันเป็นดินแดนที่ท่วมท้นไปด้วยความเงียบ เพียงจินตนาการฉันก็รู้สึกอึดอัดได้แล้วNorveçli kaşif/yazar/yayıncı Erling Kagge bunu anlatıyor. Everest’in tepesinde, Kuzey ve Güney kutuplarındaki uzun ve bir o kadar soğuk yürüyüşlerindeki sessizliği. Not long after, I was invited to give a lecture at St Andrews University in Scotland. I was to choose the subject myself. I tended to talk about extreme journeys to the ends of the Earth, but this time my thoughts turned homewards, to that Sunday supper with my family. So I settled on the topic of silence.

And so, this little book is a collection of 33 meditations on the meaning of silence, of quiet and of stillness. And it’s a quest for ways to achieve that. The author has been to great extremes to do it. He’s a polar adventurer, but his expeditions were not purely searching for silence, but discovering it was a blessing that emerged unexpectedly from his trip. And he continues to try to find that in his “normal” life.Asked at Hay this year how his children feel about his ideas on achieving silence, Kagge replied that his daughter "thinks it's total bullshit". Erling เล่าถึงศิลปินด้านการแสดงสดอย่าง มารินา อบราโมวิค ที่ทำให้ความเงียบกลายเป็นศิลปะรูปแบบหนึ่ง ครั้งหนึ่งในปี 2010 เธอนั่งเฉยๆ เป็นเวลา 736 ชั่วโมงกับ 30 นาที ใน MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) สบตาผู้เข้าชมกว่า 1,500 คนโดยไม่พูดอะไรสักคำ เมื่อนั่งนานขึ้นๆ เธอก็ได้ยินเสียงต่างๆ ที่อยู่ไกลนอกตัวตึกออกไป ศิลปินอยู่กับความเงียบได้เนิ่นนาน แม้ในครั้งการเดินทางไปทะเลทรายครั้งแรก เธอจะรู้สึกกลัวมันก็ตาม

Lccn 2017012758 Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-0001186 Openlibrary_edition Do note that I am referring here, as Kagge and likely Pascal are, to "western" humanity, as I am aware that many eastern cultures and traditions allow for a much larger place for silence than is typically seen in the western world.) This is a book about stillness, about quiet, about finding an escape from the endless babble of noise and chaos that is our digital life. And in that moment, find the ability to look inwards again, rather than ever outwards. The lost stillness of life How does one achieve silence in the everyday? While Kagge practices meditation, yoga, and going off into nature whenever possible, he also speaks about achieving "silence" while walking Oslo's busy streets or crawling through Manhattan's sewer system. I suppose this is some zen state that an experienced meditator can simply drop into. Or, to say it in a way that makes it sound slightly more achievable, simply comes from being particularly practiced in "tuning out the noise". You’d expect that a book called Silence would be about, well, silence, wouldn’t you? While Silence in the age of noise certainly explores the idea of silence, it doesn’t focus on the idea in the way you might expect.Have you ever read a book that resonated with you more so than usual because you read it at the right time in your life? For me, this was that book. At the time of reading it, I've been laid up for 6 weeks after ankle surgery which has given me more than enough time to think about what sort of direction I want for 2018. As someone that's always enjoyed time alone but makes a living from the internet, finding silence within noise is something that's important to me...and I've never read a better approach on the matter than this book. My children have no real experience of that. Between a great abundance of stuff, of toys and books and magazines, and the constant digital delights from their iPads and streaming TV, boredom doesn’t exist in quite the same way. My children hardly pause any more. They are always accessible, and almost always busy. “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself,” wrote the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The three of them tend to sit in front of a screen – whether alone or together with others. I do it too. Become engulfed in my smartphone, enslave myself to my own tablet – as a consumer and at times as a producer. I am constantly interrupted, interruptions engendered by other interruptions. I rummage around in a world that has little to do with me. Attempt to be effective until I realise I won’t get any further regardless of how effective I’ve become. It feels like trying to find your way through fog on a mountain, without a compass at hand, and ending up walking around in circles. The goal is to be busy and effective, nothing else. What is silence? Why is it more important than ever?’ … Erling Kagge. Photograph: Simon Skreddernes