October was incessant. After one day came the next but every time I looked at the calendar it was still October. Some evenings I’d go to the local cathedral because I was hoping that maybe my feelings would become smaller against the high pillars and I could walk out cleansed, worthy. One evening the clouds parted and the whole sky collapsed onto the stained glass windows, coating the pews in a thin layer of waxy light until everything was burning amber. In the light you could see flecks of dust twisting upwards and forming a spine that reached towards the ceiling. I understood why if God were to be found anywhere, it would be here.
I recently flew off my bike after skidding down a concrete underpass laden with wet leaves (and I never wear a helmet because I like to pretend I’m in a New Wave French film) which resulted in a minor concussion. I’ve been highly irritable and in a permanent bad mood ever since; how inconvenient to be reminded that skulls can split and skin bleeds and that we’re all just made of breakable things.
Google says that increased irritation and mood swings are normal following a concussion, but it didn’t say that everything would feel so loud. My spoon clangs against the bowl when I lower it into the sink but it sounds like crashing more than clanging and the church bells don’t feel romantic these days because each chime is a reminder that hours always move forward even when it doesn’t feel like it because whole years have felt shorter than some hours and all the things I wanted to have done by now are withering away in an underpass somewhere and the wind heaves against my bedroom window like a condemning of all those years of indecision and hesitation and suddenly everything bad feels like it’s on purpose.
I sit beside a middle aged couple in a cafe where everything is red from the walls to the sinking leather chairs: the man vacantly watches something on his phone and the woman is texting. I don’t think either of them have blinked in the past two minutes and I’m sure their coffee is cold by now. Their silence makes the loudest sound of all and I know it might not make sense but I hate them.
When I get home the power cuts out and the washing machine almost sets itself on fire. One thing that all bad days have in common is that each annoyance or inconvenience is followed by another and the day doesn’t seem to have an end.
Silence isn’t always about the absence of noise but sometimes a lack of fidgeting and interruption. When I’m writing and trying to work out what the next sentence will be, my first instinct is often to grab my phone to distract myself from the arduous task of thinking. In ‘The End of Absence,’ Michael Harris talks about how excessive smartphone use has led us to live in a permanent state of “restless idleness”, flitting from one stimulating conversation or curiosity to the next. I think the sound equivalent of such fragmented phone use is “muffled loudness.”
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Every few months I remember that the only way for things to get done is to do them. If I want to feel less scattered then I must stop feeding the desire for distraction and stimulation with distraction and stimulation. If I want more silence then I must learn how to purge the excess noise.
Fake silence (scrolling in a noiseless room) can sometimes be mistaken for real silence (noticing the radiators clicking or the robins tucked between the leaves of a birch tree telling secrets to one another). To decipher between them I must spend less time oscillating frantically between the two, and retrain myself to look up; to come back into the room and pay attention to all of its little sounds that punctuate the silence.
If things start to feel too overbearing it’s usually because I intended on replying to a message but then started to scroll and unknowingly abandoned my surroundings and good thoughts and bad thoughts and daydreams and desires and wishes –– I outsourced any sense of agency to my phone. And so the only antidote I can think of is to restore awareness to the senses and make them sacred again, tracing the outlines of where the self begins and ends.
Even though I want to stay in bed because it is dark and cold I am old enough now to recognise that what I want and what I need are sometimes two very different things, so I put my coat on and march towards the quiet residential streets, making sure to leave my phone behind on the bedside table.
Walking without my phone almost feels like a religious experience. Without my phone there are no pictures to take or thoughts to relinquish with the movement of my thumbs –– it is entirely different to putting my phone on aeroplane mode or cradling it in a coat pocket whilst trying to ignore its presence. There is silence.
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Nearly all of the houses I pass on my late night walk have big bay windows with sheer curtains which allow nosy people like me to see what’s happening inside when the lights are on, so I glance at an old woman folding clothes and a child skidding across the living room carpet and empty chairs lit by the glow of the television. Unencumbered by the mental weight of a phone, everything takes on a raw quality and I’m aware of an aching that extends beyond my body as I pass each house. I can’t fathom how or why any of us exist at all.
My life starts to feel urgent, but in a good way. By filtering the static noise there is new space for the inner self to speak clearly and be curious about its wants and desires and what might be required to achieve them –– how committed I’ll have to be with the boring things like consistency and discipline if I want to feel more human –– because no cathedral or God or scrolling or wishing can do the existing part for me.
The world starts to feel like it’s breathing. I swallow as much air as my lungs will allow.
I’m continuously trying to resist the urge to pick up my phone these days and instead spend more time devoted to the seemingly insignificant moments that I’d otherwise be oblivious to, like the shared quiet of Sunday nights on a train carriage, the week wearing thin on faces. Some passengers turn their heads to look out at the sleeping cities passing by, but it’s too dark outside and instead we’re all faced with the hollow reflections of each line and crease carved beneath our eyes.
The train rocks gently forwards and makes a sound like the soft shuffle of a vinyl that continues spinning even after the record has finished, the needle looking for another groove to make contact with. November is whirring faintly in the background, waiting for someone to close their eyes and listen.