Post 20485320614:

wow intense! i would not like it probably. when i sleep i need it 100% dark/black, but i need a little bit of traffic/wind noise/dog snores….i live in the middle of the city so i am probably just used to it.

I hear that.

I find the soft sounds of wind, waves, birds, traffic, rain (especially rain), device hums, muffled voices of pedestrians, distant trains, clouds gossiping about things they’ve spied upon, plants complaining about the weather, my dead heart fluttering fruitlessly, worms sneezing, and so on extremely comforting and soothing.

It is definitely a useful bias to have when living in a city (not that the countryside is really any quieter, just different in its soundscape) and gives those odd moments of pure untainted silence even greater impact.

Link 20478438182:

World's quietest room, a Guinness record. ›

A typical quiet room you sleep in at night measures about 30 decibels. A normal conversation is about 60 decibels. This room has been measured at -9 decibels.

Orfield Labs uses the room to test products, including switches that go on car dashboards and the sound an LED display makes on a cell phone to make sure they’re not too loud.

Anechoic chambers are really weird and cool.

One becomes incredibly sensitive to the sound of your body’s internal functions: not just the obvious heart beats, but also the pulsations of circulating blood, and the noise that your skin, muscles and bones make as they move.

I tend to become a little unstable in them. No doubt due to the inner ear feeling confused and that having a knock-on effect on it’s gyroscopic functionality.

Link 19525065975:

Is Silence Going Extinct? ›

digitalsensorium:

…What’s more, other experiments showed, much as the M.I.T. study did, that noise affected the way visitors saw landscapes: when volunteers viewed photos of natural vistas while listening to helicopters on tape, they rated the scenes less picturesque than they did under quieter conditions…

…scientists were about to realize the damage society’s widening sonic footprint could do to natural ecosystems. In 2003, a Dutch team studying a common songbird, the great tit, reported in Nature that males of the species shifted their calls to a higher frequency in cities, where low-frequency human noise masked their normal song range. Further proof that urban sounds cause wild creatures to adjust their vocal styles quickly followed. Nightingales sing louder in louder environments. Robins — usually diurnal singers — switch to nighttime in areas that are chaotic by day..

Photo 16556908760:

“I… set out… for a… noiseless… room. Then I remembered… The silence depressed me.”

“I… set out… for a… noiseless… room. Then I remembered… The silence depressed me.”

Quote 16556827644:

In silence we face and admit the gap between the depth of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface which is untrue to our own reality. We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others, not just with a mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic love. That is the reason for choosing silence.
Thomas Merton, Love & Living, Naomi Burton Stone and Br. Patrick Hart, Editors. New York: Harcourt. 1979, p. 41. (via silencesounds)

Quote 16556783225:

Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, and every word. The unmanifested is present in this world as silence. All you have to do is pay attention to it.
Awakened Life: Silence is Golden (via silencesounds)

Photo 11725095234:

Silence is dry; sound is wet. Volume is the mass of sound. In silence you can hear people think, but only when their bodies stop making noises. But who cares what people think? The noises their bodies make are more interesting anyway. Listen to your body. Talk to plants. Ignore people.

Silence is dry; sound is wet. Volume is the mass of sound. In silence you can hear people think, but only when their bodies stop making noises. But who cares what people think? The noises their bodies make are more interesting anyway.

Listen to your body. Talk to plants. Ignore people.

Post 3503934457:

Why, hullo there.

I must have changed my deodorant or something as it seems I have gained a notable  number of new followers recently!

  • Welcome!
  • Dobrý den!
  • Saluton (Eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde).
  • Guten Tag.
  • שלום
  • Здравствуйте!
  • ¡Hola!
  • こんにちは, ｺﾝﾆﾁﾊ
  • Dzień dobry! Cześć!
  • printf (“Hello, world!\n”);
  • emacs —no-splash -f view-hello-file

Sorry that I can’t follow you all back. I’d need over 48 hours in a day to properly consume all the awesome stuff you kindly share, and lots of music content can’t easily be speed-consumed. Also, if connections were mandatorily bi-directional that would just lead to stagnant, echo-chamber, anti-evolutionary network effects: the equivalent of cultural in-breeding.

But I do always check each follower’s Tumblrs, digging about 5 pages down and hitting random a few times to see what’s there. But that’s hardly a statistically significant sample on which to make accurate judgements. If you think I’m missing out on your own unique coolness then, please, do tell.

On that harmonic note, I’ve been feeling strangely conversant (and conversing strangely?) recently. So feel free to introduce yourself, ask me stuff (I’ll answer pretty much anything, especially good trolling), share something cool (such as cats playing synths), tell me about the kind of sound you like, throw some cool music into my SoundCloud dropbox, or whatever tickles your fancy. I’ve even tickled the option that enables photo replies to this post - I’m sure I won’t regret that.

This way I can reconcile my lovely Tumblr procrastination as “market research,” “community engagement,” and “fulfilling symmetric cyber-highway obligations,” on top of “greatly enjoying being inspired by vibrant, cool smart folks.”

But I’m cool if you’re happier staying quiet. I, too, understand and respect the powerful beauty of silence.

(I must confess to having a few posts in my ask still awaiting reply. Please forgive me as this has been a very hectic week - in a great way, I think! - and I should get the peace I need to apply the effort your great questions deserve soon.)