Does anyone here remember a mediocre horror movie from a few years back titled The Howling? It was a werewolf movie, notable mainly for having Dee Wallace as its leading lady, which was a role infrequently offered to her. Well, after watching that movie – no, it wasn’t my idea – my initial reaction was that the main problem from being surrounded by werewolves would be the noise level. All that howling, and at the most inopportune times!
A high noise level incites a reaction: the desire to muffle the noise. When the noise is audible, we have obvious countermeasures. When the noise is semantic, things are a bit dicier. And these days, semantic noise is everywhere.
It’s about politics, of course. Slogans. Campaign promises that promise exactly nothing. Denigrations of opponents that reduce to about the same, always matched to counter-denigrations. Tendentious descriptions of others’ pasts and proclivities. All in the name of winning a BLEEP!ing election.
As a writer, that sort of noise doesn’t just annoy me. It offends me. It strikes me as abuse of both the English language and of the intelligence and attention span of American voters. And as we are never truly free of political campaigning any more, it’s become a continuous phenomenon.
Muffling such noise is a considerable challenge. You can turn off the television. You can turn off the radio. You can refuse to read or listen to the news. You can run inside and lock the door when you see an excessively garrulous neighbor approaching. Even so, the noise pervades our environment. You can find it in the supermarket, the clothes store, the auto showrooms…everywhere.
Politically-focused noise isn’t a primary phenomenon, of course. It’s an effect of the total politicization of life in the Land of The Formerly Free. My fear is that it’s beginning to induce psychoses in the more vulnerable segments of our populace.
Sure, call me crazy. You wouldn’t be the first. But haven’t you seen something similar among the Cause People in your district? Don’t they seem a bit…off? Glassy-eyed, reduced to typeset phrases of ambiguous meaning (if any), unable to alter their routines or their rhythms regardless of the circumstances?
I sometimes feel a bit guilty for prattling about political subjects so much. I’m certainly not reducing the ambient noise level by doing so. Which is why I force myself to “break character” every now and then with something funny, or a bit of music. It’s possible that the departures from pattern help to keep me as sane as I am…however sane that is.
Anyway, it’s time for a bit of music. Pascal has filled the “Classical” niche with his post of the “flash mob” performance of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” That’s the final movement of the Ninth Symphony, for those who can’t quite remember the source. I’ll handle the pop / rock duties with this catchy and strangely evocative song from Level 42. Don’t blame me if it gets you humming. At least that will help muffle the noise!
It just occurred to me
I must be blind
Why do I try so hard to keep my cool
When I’m about to lose my mind
There was a vision
Flashing by
Of a summers’ day I spent with you
Of a child who never learnt how to cryWhen those around me
Fall in despair
I call upon my common sense
‘Cause someone has to care
A sudden decision
I can’t explain
Though I’ve often tried to change the rules
The game remains the sameFor love
I’ve played the part so many times
It fits me like a glove
But I’m the victim
In the bitter end
I know you need me to be strong
l just don’t know how much longer I can pretendYou always need me to be
A good man in a stormIt sometimes scares me
The further we go
Just how much we understand
And just how much we know
So whatever happened
In our hearts
While making perfect sense of life
We still remain so far apartYou always want me to be
A good man in a stormTrying to fit the social norm
And be a good man in a storm
Trying hard since I was born
To be a good man in a stormTrying to fit the social norm
And be a good man in a storm
Trying hard since I was born
To be a good man in a storm
3 comments
Apropos of nothing else, thank you for posting this track from World Machine…. one of my favourite bands, whose drummer was (and presumably still is) one of the tightest players, clean and efficient.. I learned single-stroke 16ths from endless hours playing along to this album.
The muffling you mention will shortly become moot… there are much larger things providing a backdrop to the up-close-and-personal stuff of day-to-day, and those things have the potential to render the rest mere reminders of the good old days, when we had the leisure to be confounded by such inanities.
God Bless, Mr Poretto.
M in C
Author
They were musicians, rather than the egotists and show-offs that came to dominate rock. There weren’t many such, even during the 80s when musicianship seemed to make a brief comeback. I miss them.
Re: “Muffling such noise is a considerable challenge. You can turn off the television. You can turn off the radio. You can refuse to read or listen to the news. You can run inside and lock the door when you see an excessively garrulous neighbor approaching. Even so, the noise pervades our environment. You can find it in the supermarket, the clothes store, the auto showrooms…everywhere.”
Your observations have been shared by those who came before you, for example Neil Postman’s experiences which prompted him to write “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” – which was published in 1984 and is now almost forty years old.
Our society is so designed as to discourage the inner world of thought and reflection which are necessary to genuine human discernment and wisdom. One way to discourage people from departing from the surface life of noise, advertising, consumption and all of the other profit-drive chaff that fills the air and into the inner world of thought and reflection – is by filling the external environment with noise, entertainment, and other distractions. Postman died in 2003; one cannot help but wonder what he would make of today’s hyper-active world….
The networked world of the internet and instant gratification not only discourages reflection and deep thought, it positively works against them. It is no accident that ADD, hyperactivity and related disorders and conditions are on the rise. In the past, humans had to think in terms of years, decades, even centuries when considering problems and their solutions, but in today’s world, when what happened fifty years ago is considered ancient history, what will happen to us then?