Imagine, if you will, a real silence. A silence behind the sound of any voice. A silence so deep, so profound, that your mind becomes black, empty, void. The silence of dreamless sleep. The silence of death. Difficult to imagine because it is not a part of our ordinary experience, filled as this is with sounds of all kinds, and more sounds all the time. But that absolute silence is somewhere there and it forms the back- ground upon which all sound floats like rippling water upon a lake, waves upon the ocean... This silence we are asked to imagine is, of course, metaphorical. In the poet Theodore Roethke's line, it is "the imperishable quiet at the heart of form." It is the silence of what some people call the eternal; it is a spiritual silence, which, through its very stillness, sings of things transcending material reality, sings through material reality, the singing of a rock, the sea, the light of the sun. But these are poetic images which in the mundane world are becoming innundated with very real sounds, undesired sounds, sounds which make it harder and harder to find places of quietude wherein that other reality, the poetic reality, the spiritual reality, can have meaning. The poetic reality needs actual quiet for sustenance, and such quiet is more and more difficult to find. In an editorial in "The Saturday Review," Norman Cousins wrote: "Silence is not nothingness or the absence of sound. It is a prime condition for human serenity and the natural environment of contemplation. A life without regular periods of silence is a life without essential nourishment for both the spirit and the functioning intelligence. Silence offers the vital element of privacy, without which an individual becomes something less then himself... We live at a time when thought alone represents the difference between sanity and total madness. One of the prime requirements of such thought is privacy and a little silence, at least now and then." That was in 1962. Five years later "Life" magazine, addressing itself to a much broader readership, showed the same concern for the destruction of solitude by noise. "The escalating noise problem," it editorialized, "may require the widespread re-discovery of the personal value of silence. Most religions throughout human history have insisted that people need regular intervals of silence for spiritual health." And now we know that it is not just spiritual health which is endangered by noise, but, as we shall learn, physical health too is detrimentally affected by sounds in our environment which are undesired--noise. Noise is defined by the American National Standards Institute as: 1. any undesired sound 2. an erratic, intermittent, or statistically random oscillation It is somehow outrageous, to use that word in its proper sense of "to be outraged, filled with rage," that we should even have to plead a case for the ill effects of noise, that human beings don't have enough sensi- tivity or thoughtfulness to accept as common assumption that harmful sounds intruding upon the private sound-spaces of people not electing to hear those sounds, that those sounds should not be eliminated from our environment. But we know how long it has taken us to become aware of much less subtle damage to ourselves and our planet: the spraying of crops with DDT; the dumping of waste chemicals into our streams and lakes; smoking cigarettes; covering up miles and miles of plant life with asphalt; destroying delicate ecosystems like tropical rain forests; contributing to the eradication of 3 to 5 species a day; and so on and so on. We know of too many instances when human beings have not acted in the best interests of survival, individual or collective. That human beings can have allowed pollution of any kind to render our environment ugly and unihabitable is part of a larger malaise, the same sickness that keeps us from solving the human problems of housing, education, civil rights, unemployment, and health care, while at the same time solving the difficult and expensive problems of faster air transportation, a national highway system, sophisticated weaponry, and a manned landing on the moon. Human beings, the so-called "thinking" or "reasoning" animals (homo sapiens), display an amazing quantity of thoughtlessness and un-reason. Small wonder then that the ill-effects of noise have barely made a dent in our consciousnesses, that it was not until the end of the 60's that Congress even began to legislate any setting of ceilings on noise, legislation which is not not continuing because of our current adminstration's notions about "deregulation". In 1968 Congress authorized the FAA to certify aircraft for noise, and in May of 1969 a new regulation required that industry doing more than $10,000 worth of business with the Federal government reduce noise levels so as not to deafen more than 10% of its workers. We all know how effective legislation has been in reducing airplane noise! And isn't it marvelous that only 10% of government employees working in high-noise jobs should be allowed to be deafened! Some consolation for those who fall into that 10%. And yet, at least that legislation gave some amount of protection. No longer. We are somehow to assume that industry, of its own sense of propriety, will regulate itself, will make the corrections in its safety standards, will install the "costly" pollution control devices, will manufacture that more costly sound-muffler. If we believe this, we are truly fools and perhaps deserve the consequences of our stupidity. For obvious reasons, I have a vested interest in the conditions of our hearing. My biases lead me in the direction of wanting the human species to develop ever more refined hearing abilities, to be able to detect nuances in sounds, to be able to live in equitable harmony with the myriad non-human sounds which surround us, many of which are subtle and require a background of relative silence to hear. And, of course, I am interested in those conditions which foster imagination, creativity, mindful responsiveness, meditative alertness, balance of the self with the world--conditions difficult to achieve in the midst of the host of interruptive noises which beseige us: jackhammers, airplanes, cars, stereos shaking the walls, air-conditioners filling the air-waves with white noise, blenders tearing vegetables to shreds, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, etc., etc., etc. Murray Schafer stated the issue well in the introduction to Ear Cleaning: "The ear, unlike some other sense organs, is exposed and vulnerable. The eye can be closed at will; the ear is always open. The eye can be focused and pointed at will; the ear picks up all sound right back to the acoustic horizon in all directions. "Its only protection is an elaborate psychological system of filtering out undesirable sounds in order to concentrate on what is desirable. The eye points outward; the ear draws inward. It soaks up information. It would seem reasonable to suppose that as sound sources in the acoustic environment multiply--and they are certainly multiplying today--the ear will become blunted to them and will fail to exercise its individulist- ic right to demand that insouciant and distracting sounds should be stopped in order that it may concentrate totally on those which truly matter." (R. Murray Schafer, Creative Music Education, p. 49, 1976) Schafer's speculation about hearing loss has been corroborated by research. "There are many signs that the hearing ability of men and women of industrialized cities is declining. One of them is the shift in the base line for so-called loudness curves. In 1932 this baseline was zero decibels. This marked the threshold of audibility for a healthy set of ears. In 1956, less than a generation later, this reference point had to be changed to plus-4 decibels. This shift is interpreted by acousti- cians to mean that the hearing acuity of the general population has diminished." (Robert Alex Baron, The Tyranny of Noise, p. 83, 1970) Noise also has adverse effects other than to the ears. Here is a survey of some of the damaging effects of noise on the human person, taken from Baron's text: Sounds evoke much more than the sensation of hearing. The sound signal is transmitted, via the brain, to almost every nerve cen- ter and organ of the body. Therefore, sound influences not only the hearing center of the brain, but the entire physical, physio- logical, emotional, and psychological makeup of the human being. The received sound wave evokes a combination of responses--audi- tory, intuitive, emotional, biological, asociative. Sound's impact is a profound one. (p.45) The most common and serious forms of organic heart disease are those affecting the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart. When the passageway inside one of these vessels becomes sufficiently narrowed, or is blocked by a clot, a heart-attack may occur. The cause of death is the reduction of the blood flow, and consequently the delivery of oxygen to the tissues. Without the necessary oxygen, the tissues die. What causes the thickening of the arterial walls is the deposit of cholesterol and other fatty substances that float in the blood. Though diet is popularly associated with increases in cholesterol levels, stress has been demonstrated to increase cholesterol and other fat levels and contribute to the thick- ening of the arterial walls. Stress increases the secretion of adrenalin, and this in turn increases the amount of free fatty acids in the blood stream, an increase associated with an elevation of cholesterol. It has been demonstrated at the University of South Dakota that noise levels common to our environment raise cholesterol levels in rats and rabits (and also cause heart enlargement in rats). Dr. Samuel Rosen of the Citizens for a Quiet City in New York has stated that loud noises cause adrenal hormones to be released into the blood stream to intensify tension and arousal. (pp. 54-55) Rats subjected to excessive noise have developed hypertension, with the older rats showing the greatest sensitivity to noise stress... In one test, a popping paper bag raised the brain blood pressure more quickly than a hypodermic injection. (p.56) Noise influences the heart's beat. Experimental work in the Soviet Union has shown a weakening of the contractions of the heart muscle from noise exposure. (p.56) Without awakening the sleeper, noise stimuli will constrict his blood vessels, change his heart rate and muscular tone. (p.59) Even noise of a low intensity produces arousal reactions and what is significant, prevents the sleeper from reach- ing the deep sleep stage. (p.59) Years ago, investigators were looking for a standardized stressing agent, something that would consistently cause abnormalities in animals [????]. By accident they discovered that noise could pro- duce the abnormalities they wanted: lesions in the urinary and cardiovascular systems, changes in the uteri and overies of female animals, alterations in the testicular structure of male animals. They also discovered that the acoustic stimulus could cause changes in the body's chemistry: an increased production of ovarian hormones, and other complex hormonal changes that influence fertility, growth, and other essential bodily functions. (p.62) Epileptic seizures are sometimes triggered by noise. A department of Agriculture review of animal studies reported experiments in which rats exposed to noise showed changes in the lining of the stomach, changes that could cause the appear- ance of gastric ulcers. (p.65) -A sudden rise in blood pressure may cause a headache -Noises causes a sudden rise in blood pressure -Headache pain may be caused by contraction of the head and neck muscles in response to stress. -Noise causes stress. -Many headaches occur when the blood vessels around the brain swell and impinge on a sensitive nerve, or when the blood supply to the brain is choked off by tense neck muscles. The muscle tension constricts the arteries, and the sub- sequent dilating phase is the painful phase. -Noise tenses muscles. -Migraine headaches are most often triggered by emotional factors in persons whose blood vessels are predisposed to painful changes in diameter. -Noise changes the diameter of the blood vessels. (pp.67-68) ...there is good reason to suspect that in addition to chemical and physical reactions, noise plays havoc with our minds and our emotions. (p.68) One does not get used to noise. Somewhere in the human body, that sound is being absorbed--at an as yet unknown price. (p.71) The most dangerous noise, stated Dr. Gerd Jansen, is noise we are accustomed to, that we do not 'hear,' such as traffic noises. These are the noises that cause physiological responses because of their intensities or frequency ranges. They do not lend them- selves to adaptation. (pp.71-72) To live with noise is no unlike living with electric shocks. (p.74) Sounds above and below the audible range also influence the living organism. (p.75) R. Murray Schafer, in The New Soundscape, notes some of the bizzare experiments being conducted with ultra- and sub-sonic sounds: The building is on a military installation somewhere in the United States...inside are nightmares. In one of the large laboratory rooms, two physicists and a biologist stand above a heavy metal table. They wear thick ear pads. On the table is a dial-covered device about the size and shape of a television set, with a trum- pet-like horn protruding from its face. The device is a kind of siren, designed to produce high-frequency sound of an outrageous intensity. The scientists are studying the effects of this sound on materials, animals and men. They are wondering if sound can be used as a weapon... One of the physicists begins the demonstration by picking up a wad of steel wool with a tonglike instrument on a long pole. He holds the steel wool in the invisible beam of sound that issues from the horn. The steel wool explodes in a whirling cascade of white-hot sparks... The biologist has brought a white rat into the room in a small cage. The rat is running around the cage, looking unhappy about all the noise. But his worries don't last long. The biologist lifts the cage into the sound field. The rat stiffens, rises up to the full stretch of his legs, arches his back, opens his mouth wide and falls over. He is dead. An autopsy will reveal that he had died of instant overheating and a massive case of the bends. There are bubbles in his veins and internal organs. Professor Rudnick and his colleagues built the most power- ful siren ever conceived to that date. It made what was, as far as anybody knew, the loudest continuous sound ever heard on earth up to that time: 175 db, some 10,000 times as strong as the ear-splitting din of a large pneumatic riveter. The frequency range of this enormous howl was from about 3,000 cycles per second (near the top range of a piano) to 34,000 cps, in the ultrasonic range. Strange things happened in this nightmarish sound field. If a man put his hand directly in the beam of sound, he got a painful burn between the fingers. When the siren was aimed upwards, 3/4-inch marbles would float lazily about it at certain points in the harmonic field, held up and in by the acoustic pressure. By varying the harmonic structure of the field, Professor Rudnick could make pennies dance on a silk screen with chorus-like precision. He could even make one penny rise slowly to a vertical position while balancing another penny on its edge. A cotton wad held in the field would burst into flame in about six seconds. 'To satisfy a skeptical colleage,' reports Professor Rudnick, 'we lit his pipe by exposing the open end of the bowl to the field.' (Schafer, Op. cit., pp. 111-112) Robert Baron summarizes the case for recognizing noise as a health problem as follows: We are being exposed to increasing amounts of a new and potent mix of stresses--chemical, physical, and psychological. Noise, at even moderate levels, forces a systemic response from the total organism. It is not only the sense of hearing that is involved . What is also involved is what happens after the brain receives the sound signal. The brain places the body on a war footing. The repetition of these alerts is exhausting. It depletes energy levels; it can cause changes in the chemistry of the blood, in the volume of the blood circulation; it places a strain on the heart; it prevents restorative sleep and rest; it hinders con- valescence; it can be a form of torture. It can so weaken the body's defense mechanisms that diseases can more readily take hold. The organism does not adapt to noise; it becomes enured and pays a price. The price of this 'adaptation' is itself a hazard to health. The effect of noise on health may--like radiation poisoning-- be something that will show no clinically significant symptoms at the time of exposure or shortly thereafter. Conclusions must not be drawn from short-term observations. Nobody, even today, knows too much about how air pollution affects people. Doctors back in the 1920's were concerned about smoking as a health hazard, but it was not until recent years that medical science was able to establish a link between smoking and health. The same lag applies to noise. Some doctors and scientists have long suspected that noise is inflicting damage, but the nature of that damage is yet to be discovered. (pp.85-86) It is a well known fact that noise can cause deafness: not just the trauma of an explosion, mind you, but the cumulative effect of prolonged exposure to noise below the levels produced by the Chicago and New York train and subway systems. In 1961, together with an international team of physicians and audiologists, Dr. Rosen conducted a study of the primitive (sic) Mabaans of the African Sudan. These people were found to have a keen sense of hearing and no evidence of coronary heart disease. They live in an environment almost free of noise--a typical level is 40 decibels--with few emotional stresses. There was evidence that their blood vessels enjoyed a normal elasticity even in old age. Industrialized humans lose this elasticity; hardening occurs. Among the Mabaans, who live in an atmosphere of virtual silence, the hearing of even men in their seventies and eighties is the equal of healthy children of ten. (Baron, pp. 77-78) But even a few minutes of exposure to intense noise can cause temporary deafness. The users of noisy appliances, powered lawn mowers, for example, experience significant hearing loss for a variable period of time after using such products. This loss is called noise-induced temporary threshold shift. It is this that the members of rock bands experience wherever amplified music is played. Subjectively it may be observed as a muffled sen- sation and/or a ringing in the ears. One empirical method for detecting noise-induced temporary threshold shif is to listen to a watch before and after exposure. The degree of loss is indicated by the amount of time needed for recovery. Researchers at the University of Minnesota measured hearing sensi- tivity of band members following a four-hour session of music having an over-all sound-pressure level ranging from 110 to 125 dbs. In 25 minutes there was a loss of from 10 to 30 decibels of hearing in the critical 2,000 hz speech frequency. Recovery in some cases took from 18 to 50 hours. The longer recovery time could be serious if the individual re-exposed himself before full recovery occurred. In fact, after suffering an undetermined amount of acoustic assaults that cause temporary deafness, the amplified music addicts or the factory worker, may end up with noise-induced permanent threshold shift. (pp.78-79) Nature has made it easier for us to lose the ability to hear the upper frequencies first. This means that the first penalty of excessive noise is the ability to enjoy pastoral sounds and the full range of musical tones... Most members of an industrialized society, by the time they reach senior citizenship, will not be able to hear 10,000 cps, let alone the 15,000 cps and above that stereo systems are able to reproduce. The decline in hearing acuity for the male in an indus- trialized society begins somewhere between the ages of 25 and 30. Many millions of human beings are exposed to a lifetime of noise so intense that they find it no longer possible to hear human speech sounds. I join Roethke in seeking that "imperishable quiet at the heart of form," and if not that, at least a quiet unobtruded upon by undesired sound. Sounds are capable of violating one's intimate sound-space, and just as we would not prop someone's eyes open and force that person to look at pictures, or just as we would not go up to someone in a dorm or in another room in our homes and start tapping them on the head for half an hour or more, so we should have the considerateness not to invade other people's privacy with sounds other people might not want to be hearing. Curt Sachs, a noted musicologist, summarizes this predicament of our present culture eloquently: Western music, the pride of our culture, is no longer what it should be and was: the highlight of our day, edifying and blissful. Our modern lives are ad nauseum saturated with music and wouldbe music. I do not speak of the dizzying quantity of concerts and recitals--we attend them or stay away as we please. But we cannot have our coffee break without the blaring inter- ference of a non-stop loudspeaker on the wall or a jukebox in the corner; the savings-bank pours music over our head while we pass a check across the counter; railroad cars and buses feed us catchy or sentimental tunes instead of improving the service; and the neighbors force us to share in their radio and television orgies. People of high civilization have become voracious hearers but do hardly listen. Using organized sound as a kind of opiate, we have forgotten to ask for sense and value in what we hear. In primitive music, on the contrary, sense and value are paramount qualities. Not only is singing indispensable for special events, like wedding and childbirth, puberty rites and death, and whenever luck must be forced on adverse powers in hunting, harvest, and sickness. It also acts when regular work, as rowing a boat, or rocking a child, or grinding edible roots, demands and gives a rhythmical impulse. In this inter-weaving with motions and emotions, music is not a reflex, remote and pale, but an integral part of life. As (the musicologist) Furer-Haimenpale, puts it exquisitely in words, this music 'resounds in the darkness, gripping the singers and blending them one and all, til they finally merge in the unity of the dance. This rhythm is more than art, it is the voice of humanity's primeval instinct, the revelation of the all-embracing rhythm of growth and decay, of love, life and death.' (The Four Ages of Music) THE IMPERISHABLE QUIET AT THE HEART OF FORM. NOISE IS NOT THE PRICE OF PROGRESS NOISE IS NOT THE INEVITABLE BY-PRODUCT OF TECHNOLOGY NOISE IS THE PRICE YOU AND I PAY FOR GREED AND INSENSITVITY, AND OUR OWN INDIFFERENCE... ______________________________________ For ruther information about noise and its effects, and what you might be able to do about it, write: International Society Against Noise Sihlstrasse 17 Zurich, Switzerland