As I stood staring disconsolately at my weeping flange (it is an elegant tap, but simple, single taps are so much easier to maintain) my world went quiet and was quite suddenly a very different place. I know you will recognise that disconcerting feeling you get when something is different - not necessarily wrong but definitely changed? (we chaps have a strategy - check for new hair do s, outfits, perfume, accessories that require positive comment). But you can’t quite crystallise that knowledge, and you know that the uneasy feeling won’t go away until you have solved the puzzle.
As the pool of water around the tap base grew larger, so my realisation grew that there was no sound infiltrating my head. The boiler was not firing, the central heating was not pumping, the fridge had achieved its pre-programmed froidure and even the birds in the garden were silent. The toddler next door was not chattering, the wind-borne noise from road and rail was being blown elsewhere and no dogs barked nor burglar alarms wailed. Even the scrap-mans trumpet and the call of ‘Any old iron?’ was conspicuous by its absence.
Watson Towers was silent.
And I suppose I had a glimpse of what a sensory deprivation tank might sound like, and how meditation could allow stillness and peace.
The beauty and profound appreciation of the lack of noise was over in an instant, but the appreciation of the freedom that the absence of distraction offered, of the clarity of my thoughts during the quiet (I won’t reveal them lest you recognise the shallow nature of my existence), the appreciation of the simplicity that mono-focus allows has endured. I realised that this short space in my life merely emphasises the nature of our multitasking lives.
At the risk of sounding neo-Luddite, I am not impressed that the i-phone can help me do yet more with the fag ends of my life; as I am on hold enduring Vivaldi excerpts again I may book dinner, have a game of snooker and check my walls for vertical variance. Fan-freaking-tastic! What’s wrong with one thought at a time, with a single strong strand of logic and clarity, with a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end without a having an obscure back-story and more twists and turns than your colon? I’m all for simple, for quiet exactitude, for clean and uncluttered, for Bauhaus rather than Baroque.
I have survived thus far in a world where complication increases exponentially with time passed, and I will continue to, but there is a sadness; now I cannot mend my car, cannot understand the person talking to me about my insurance claim, cannot understand 80% of the functionality of my mobile phone. For every multiplication of the convenience factor, effective and efficient seem to diminish. And it’s not just me; the evil of advertising persuades us we all need HDTV, but apparently 80% of HDTV owners do not have the required signal, or are still using RF connections and therefore actually getting reduced picture quality!
I’m going to make a space each day to calm down, slow down, turn off my e-mail auto alerts, put my mobile on silent, slip on the noise cancelling headphones, enjoy nothingness, listen to my thoughts, think about what they mean, regain my sanity.
With or without a bar of Galaxy.
Peace and love followers.
Anne
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All I have to do to achieve that state of nothingness, is to wake up in my own bed here in Brittany. My mobile phones rarely disturbs the calm, the television an even rarer distraction. I have little to disturb my inner thoughts. Sometimes, yes even the birds can interrupt, but rarely. For me, to hear the sound of the sky lark singing it's complex and involved courting song erases all the negativity around.
ReplyDeleteMaybe sometimes with all the peace and tranquility in my patch I am at risk of disappearing up my own backside ;P
It is silent in our house as-I-write this. R likes music to be on ... but when he's not here,like now, I usually prefer it to be dead quiet - apart from the swishing of the laptop motor, the hum of the fridge, the next-door-but two's neighbour's dog, a faraway lawnmower, the occasional car's roar up the hill ... still, pretty quiet. I like it.
ReplyDeleteI really like what you're writing too - you have an amazing facility with the English language and use it with bewitching finesse. Are you going to write a book? I think you should!