The Sound of Noise

Each person is gifted with physical senses to aid him in his experience of life. There’s the sense of sight, of smell, of taste, of touch, and of hearing. These sensory faculties help make full the person’s awareness of the world around him.

It’s wonderful to see the bursting sunrise, to smell the scent of a rose, to enjoy mother’s delectable cooking, to feel the touch of a loved one, to hear loving words whispered to our ears. On the opposite, we see things that appall us, feel pain when pinched, and have to bear with terrible odors, tastes and noises. Life isn’t necessarily a pleasant trip through and through.

There was a time, towards the end of the year, when my neighbor was constructing an extension to their house. They were jackhammering the ground for over a month and all through that length of time I had to struggle keeping my sanity intact. The noise was really such a torment.

I spent whole days at the mall just to get away from the noise at home. Of course, you couldn’t just go round and round at the mall the whole time; you’d soon want to sit down and get yourself something – coffee or sandwich, or both. Unnecessary expenses that totaled to quite an amount when put together, something unforeseen and therefore out of my budget.

But going away to the mall was the easier option to having to move to another residence in another place. Besides, there was no assurance that moving anywhere would free me from similar problems. My neighbor’s construction was not a City Hall project after all, so I knew it would be finished at some point, which it was.

But as soon as the construction noise had stopped, there took over the rampant firecracker explosions in excited anticipation of the approaching Christmas season. This noise was more bearable, though. At least the blasts were sparse yet, and highly dependent on money available to the neighborhood kids, which was apparently not much.

The curious thing was, even as the explosions soon got bigger and more unrelenting towards Christmastime, I was no longer getting bothered. I had come to accept that this particular sound was symbolic of the merry season.

So, when does sound become noise? The difference is hard to explain. Technically, noise is a kind of sound. But, perhaps, noise is mindless and thus irritating, while sound has some sense of purpose or meaning to it and can even be soothing. Or, perhaps, it’s the way our mind processes what gets into our ears.

I like the sound of a person whistling while at work. But when someone close by whistles when I’m doing mental work – like writing this article – my mind stops working. I start figuring out whether the whistler thinks I like his whistling or the guy is actually trying to irritate me.

This is rather weird, because I live in a densely populated district with people always moving about and talking loudly, even shouting at times, and, yes, there’s a lot of whistling too. There’s also the unceasing growl of motor vehicles passing by, since my rented place is right by the street side. Yet, normally, I can continue to work, oblivious to the chaos around me.

City dwellers are supposed to have a high tolerance for noise. I know of some who can’t sleep when they go to the province. They complain that the silence there is discomforting.

A noise need not be loud to be disturbing. What’s this soft noise we hear when we’re all alone in the house at night that keeps us awake till morning? Who is it sneaking into the house and creeping up the stairs to our room as soon as the lights go out? We get scared because this noise is not there when there’s someone else in the house with us.

The sweet little voices calling out my name at my door early mornings are certainly not noise, but I can’t stand it without getting up from bed, no matter how sleepy I still am. I know that those children want something, and I find it so hard to ignore them. What I find more disturbing are the hushed chatters of grown-up neighbors gossiping about other neighbors.

For our own sake, I think we just have to accept that there are good sounds and bad noises everywhere. The chirpings of birds and crickets are very nice to hear. So are the splashing of the waves and the humming of the wind.

Kenny Rankin and Dominic Miller and Sarah Brightman and Enya are nice sounds, too. Why so, because it makes you feel at peace listening to them. Even screaming rock music can be a good sound, if it’s your type.

One of the most intrusive noises we are commonly made to suffer with comes from the neighbors’ blaring stereo systems – especially music we don’t like or understand. Add to that the loud conversations of people aboard the same jeepney we’re on who seem to think they have the last say on every issue, from showbiz to economics to politics to religion. It looks like we have no escape.

Well, perhaps the only option is to choose to go deaf. But that doesn’t sound wise or honorable. A better recourse, perhaps, is to develop the right attitude towards whatever comes into our hearing, to know which to resist or ignore and which to accept, for good reason.

Better yet, maybe we can fashion our own conduct in such a way that we minimize the sounds that we ourselves make. Then, maybe, by our example everyone else will become as careful, always reminded that every sound we make can be a noise to others. This, for sure, would be a sound move.