50 Shades of Silence

I have a selective memory.

I might forget what I had for lunch today but have no problem remembering what color shirt you were wearing, and where you stood exactly, when you told me that one random sentence you probably didn’t think I would continue to loop in my head for 10+ years. Certainly, what I choose to remember, or forget, depends entirely on what my brain considers as “valuable data”.

That’s precisely why, for example, I can never forget the moment I fell in love with my favorite TV ad of all time. I remember being in my parents’ room, as I watched my mother pour out the coffee, and my father turn on his ancient blue Nokia phone. The window was only slightly cracked open even though the air was still heavy with my father’s cigarette smoke. It was autumn. My dog was running in and out of the room pushing a ball around with his nose. My brother was still asleep in the adjacent room. And for some inexplicable reason, which I do not remember, I happened to be in the room that day.

That said, as I think back and vividly relive the events of that morning nearly two decades ago, I realize the reason my sense of awareness was so heightened was because of the eerie silence in the room. In other words, I could have never focused on that particular commercial or the remaining details of that day had there been any significant noise in the background. And yet, if you ask me to complete any writing of any kind today, I would most likely be unable to do so without my headphones blasting loud running/work out music into my ears.

I find the contrast quite extreme and one worth exploring especially because, as I’ve come to observe, people associate “quietness” with varying degrees of “noises”. In fact, Voigt (n.d.) argues that: “Chances are good that what you think of as silence is actually white noise. Also called background or ambient noise, white noise is made up of sounds that are always present (such as traffic noises, a ticking clock, birdsong). We get so used to sounds that are present all the time that they don’t distract us. It’s as if we stop hearing them” (para. 6). So even though “white noise” makes me more perceptive of my surroundings, only “loud noise” (or rather loud music) helps me focus on my writing by simultaneously keeping my feet tapping and drowning out all of the outside chaos until faces and tables and floors and walls all mesh into one indiscernible gray blur. 

Or at least that's what works for me.

What are *your* writing habits like? Share your experiences in the comments below! :)

References

Voigt, J. (n.d.). Should You Write to White Noise? Live Write Breathe. Retrieved from http://livewritebreathe.com/should-you-write-to-white-noise/