19

ENJOY THE SILENCE

I told myself that this would be the day I would finally calm down. Breathe, heal, relax, and renew. I was at a Sunday-afternoon workshop called ‘Sacred Rest’, which promised to provide ‘the healing gift of restorative yoga’. Over two and a half hours, it would weave a gentle fusion of yoga, therapeutic breathing, divine guided meditations, and something called ‘crystal bowl sound healing’.

My back was supported by a body-length bolster as I lay on a mat on the floor, arms stretched out by my sides. I was swaddled in two blankets. The teacher had placed a cool mask that smelled of lavender on my eyes. The lights were low, and a soothing soundtrack of ommms and chimes played unobtrusively as she started to speak in that honeyed voice all yoga instructors seem to have. I could feel my mind slowing down. This was awesome. I was going to be the goddamn Mayor of Relaxotown. I would float out of this joint like a delicate bird, winging my way to tranquillity.

We were only five minutes in when it started. At first, just a faint whistle. But slowly it began to build. A wheeze. A louder, deeper whistle. Then a rasping, full-throated groan, punctuated with a snort. The bearded, heavyset man to my right was not only the Mayor of Relaxotown, he was the fucking sheriff. And he was holding us all captive with his insufferable snoring. I tried to block it out, but I could feel my muscles tensing as Regina began to scream, YOU CAN’T EVEN RELAX IN A YOGA CLASS!! YOU’RE FUCKING MENTAL!!!

That’s when the other guy started. To my left, a young man with his mouth open like a fairground clown trying to catch a ping-pong ball had joined the symphony. I’d paid $50 to lie on the floor for two hours and be assaulted by surround-sound mouth breathers. The more annoyed I became, the more I felt like a failure for not being zen enough to rise above the irritation. Where was my loving-kindness for all beings? I should be able to accept this inconvenience and transcend to a higher plane like a good enlightened soul. Instead, my neck had frozen up in fury and I was sighing loudly as I fantasised about ramming wind chimes up the nostrils of my fellow yogis.

In the end, I moved to another corner of the room. Without the snoring I was able to unwind, and I left the class feeling more relaxed than when I’d walked in. But afterwards, I reflected on the experience and realised that part of my frustration came from this sanctuary of silence being invaded by unwelcome noise at a time when it feels there are few places left for quiet contemplation. On public transport, commuters watch videos without headphones or FaceTime friends on speaker phone. On a flight home last year, the couple in the row in front of me let their two children watch a movie at full volume on an iPad, and I wondered if this was now an accepted norm. The insidious hum of digital devices has even infiltrated our libraries, art galleries, and cinemas. In the United States, movie chain AMC Theatres has considered allowing audiences to use their mobile phones during films, with CEO Adam Aron telling Variety, ‘When you tell a 22-year-old to “turn off the phone — don’t ruin the movie”, they hear, “Please cut off your left arm above the elbow.” That’s not how they live their life.’ In a description that I fully endorse, film critics likened the move to the ‘end of civilisation’, and ultimately the chain backed down. As my good friend and Age entertainment reporter Michael Lallo wrote, ‘Your right to feed your iAddiction ends with my right to enjoy a damn movie in peace. If you love multi-screening that much, why not stay at home with your TV and phone and tablet and smart watch and really make a night of it?’

The divide between private and public space is becoming more blurred as noise pollution creeps into places that were once considered sacrosanct. Friends have told me their horror stories of phones being used in yoga classes and at meditation retreats — even a loud Skype conversation carried out in the middle of a massage. Children using electronic games in restaurants and the maddening sound of music being played too loudly in libraries were also common bugbears.

The La Trobe Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria is one of my favourite places to seek silence. I go there to read, to write, sometimes just to sit. With its magnificent high-domed roof, green reading lamps, and geometrically pleasing hub and spoke of old wooden desks, it is my happy place. It used to be that just walking in there would bring me a sense of calm. But more and more it feels as if the silence that once made it a haven is no longer respected. Tourists traipse through, chattering as they snap photos, and students use the free wi-fi to FaceTime with friends. There is almost always the tinny sound of music being played too loud through headphones. I asked Matthew van Hasselt, the library’s spokesman, why mobile phones and tablets were even allowed in this once silent space, and he said that the way libraries are being used has fundamentally shifted. ‘When you have a generation who have grown up with devices and use them as a vital tool in their interaction with an institution — and we’re seeing this in galleries and museums around the world — the answer isn’t as simple as just turning it off because you’re actually removing a really powerful tool for engagement in new ways that haven’t previously been available,’ he said.

In other words, get over it, grandma. I accept that my anxious disposition perhaps makes me more susceptible to noise irritation than others, but this constant background hum of technology is not just a problem for those in search of ways to find calm. At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service warned that the constant use of digital devices and music played through earphones is putting young people at risk of ‘learned deafness’, leaving them unable to hear natural sounds such as birdsong, trickling water, and trees rustling. Kurt Fristrup warned that the innate human ability to pick up sounds that are hundreds of metres away was at risk of being lost through ‘generational amnesia’: ‘There is a real danger, both of loss of auditory acuity, where we are exposed to noise for so long that we stop listening, [and] a loss of listening habits, where we lose the ability to engage with the environment the way we were built to,’ he said. Fristrup likened excessive background noise to a fog, where you can only see what’s directly in front of you: he said the ‘rich natural choruses’ that exist even in cities are not being heard because we have tuned them out. Today’s children are at risk of growing up in an environment where silence is an alien concept.

The World Health Organization lists noise pollution as a serious health risk, ranking it as the second-largest disease burden globally, after air pollution. It can cause sleep disorders and contribute to heart attacks, learning disabilities, and psychological problems. The effects of excessive noise on children can be grave, impairing development and impacting on academic and cognitive performance. One study of more than 2,000 children from schools near various airports in Europe found a direct correlation between noise pollution and impaired reading comprehension and memory, regardless of socio-economic background. Our minds just aren’t designed to cope with all this noise.

I have learned to sleep with earplugs in. As I live in a bustling inner-city suburb of Melbourne, the fastest growing city in Australia, the sound of traffic and construction work is constant. Since I bought my place eight years ago, the apartment boom around me has gathered such pace I can’t remember a time before the skyline was dominated by towering cranes. Every vacant lot is being built on. The trams and trains are more crowded, and the cafés are overflowing. I know that I’m as much a part of the urban overpopulation problem as any of my neighbours, but still, the busier my suburb gets, the more crowded-out I feel, in space and sound. When I’m feeling anxious, the loudness only exacerbates my stress.

In a bid to dampen some of the noise from my traffic-heavy street, I invested in double-glazed windows, but that only provided a degree of respite. Nothing has been able to block out the obnoxiously loud motorbikes, which roar past my place with such ferocity the glass trembles. Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority issued more than 5,000 noisy vehicle notices between 2014 and 2016. Sometimes it feels as if every one of those vehicles is right outside my window. A bike made before 1985 has a noise limit of up to 100 decibels — that’s the equivalent of standing in the path of a jet plane as it takes off. It’s the kind of noise you can feel vibrating in your chest. It does not help my nerves. One of the super-fun things about anxiety is it puts your body on high alert. The longer you live like that, the more your natural baseline for stress increases. It means my body is hyper-sensitive to factors such as light, pain, and noise. When I hear a thunderous engine revving up as I’m trying to relax at home, my body immediately tenses. Hamish jumps as if the bike has just driven through the hallway. It can send me into a white-hot rage.

The sense of powerlessness we can feel in our increasingly overcrowded and noisy suburbs perhaps explains the rise of the angry, note-leaving neighbour. When people feel their needs are not being considered, they can revert to irrational behaviours. As Veronica reminds me, when a response to a perceived injustice is disproportionately emotional, it’s usually the aggrieved-child part of the brain that has taken over. Every time those Harley engines roar, I have to breathe deeply and recognise that the bike rider didn’t get up that morning, pull on the leather strides, and jump on their bike with the express intention of disregarding the emotional needs of a Scottish-born crazy cat lady they’ve never met. My sense of righteous grievance is unlikely to change their behaviour and only serves to make me more stressed. But it’s hard to remember that when there are few places of silent reflection left in the city and noise is coming at me from all angles. Noise pollution is an irritant that can aggravate our stress when we’re already stressed. It’s why that co-worker who hums incessantly or drums their fingernails on the desk can sometimes feel like the most excruciating form of torture.

My friend Michael Lallo shares my frustrations with the scourge of excessive noise. We often joke about how we’re basically the same person. He also needs his plans scheduled with military precision. Whenever we catch up, it’s always a contest to see who will arrive the earliest, so horrified are we by the prospect of being late. Even when we try to arrive on time, we somehow always find a way to be early. Like many people trying to navigate life in an impossibly loud world, Michael has spent a fortune on industrial noise-cancelling ear protectors to help him deal with a crowded open-plan newsroom where hot-desking has left little room for quiet contemplation. Despite these headphones being designed for runways, paper mills, and quarries, sound still seeps in, forcing him to also wear foam earplugs, which has led him to conclude that some of his colleagues are louder than jet engines. He recently messaged me an article from Time magazine, which described how people like us, who are infuriated by loud mouth-breathers or noisy eaters, may be suffering from a recently discovered brain abnormality called misophonia, a uniquely twenty-first-century condition that causes those afflicted to be pathologically triggered by certain sounds, sparking an extreme emotional reaction. It seems the cacophony of sound that punctuates modern life is pushing the anxious and the stressed to the brink of madness.

Michael and I have discussed how we’d like to be the kind of people who are unperturbed by noise intrusion and simply let the loud excesses of life in the modern age wash over us with Dalai Lama–like grace and virtue. But we’re not. We’re like Steve Carell’s chronically confused simpleton Brick Tamland in Anchorman, who screams ‘LOUD NOISES!!!!’ when people start yelling, before curling up on the floor in a ball and praying for it all to stop.

So what can we do to get peace? When I find industrial life too loud, I try to escape to nature. I go to the local park, take trips to the beach, or spend time among the tall trees in our national parks. Larry Rosen, the iDisorder expert, told me that just being in nature, away from the over-stimulation of urban life, has been found to have an automatic calming effect on the brain. A growing body of research shows a strong link between access to green spaces and reduced prevalence of anxiety, stress, and depression. It’s not just the opportunity to be physically active but also the emotional and spiritual nourishment these spaces provide. There is something innately soothing about being in the natural environment. In what some have dubbed ‘ecotherapy’, living among the greenery appears to be good for the mind and body. A Harvard University study of 10,000 female nurses found that those living in the greenest areas had a 12 per cent lower mortality rate compared to those in built-up areas. Researchers attributed this to a number of factors, including lower rates of depression and pollution, and higher levels of social engagement and physical activity. It may also be that disadvantaged communities have reduced access to green spaces, while wealthier people can afford to live in areas with an abundance of natural parkland.

I know now that if I am to maintain any semblance of calm I need to regularly switch off my devices, find quiet, and make space for my thoughts. Whenever I can, I take myself out of the digital sphere and into the natural world. As often as possible, I visit my friend Kath at her beach house down the coast. Closer to home, I leave my phone in my apartment and spend time at the nearby park, a small oasis of greenery in inner-city Melbourne where I sit listening to the wind whistle through the leaves of the ancient English elms and let my bare feet feel the grounding energy of the earth. Just being there acts as a circuit-breaker. It doesn’t happen immediately, but eventually my mind slows down, and I am released.

However, even nature is being invaded by noise pollution. On a recent beach holiday with my friend Loretta, we were swimming in the ocean as the most beautiful purple sunset stretched out above us. It was a quiet, secluded spot and I remember feeling that this was one of those perfect life moments you wish you could bottle and take home. And then, overhead, a high-pitched screech and a robotic creature that looked like a giant angry mosquito was upon us. It was the first time I’d seen a drone in the wild, and I was horrified. Leaving aside the creepiness of a strange man sitting outside a beachfront villa wearing headphones and night-vision goggles, capturing footage of two women in bikinis swimming at dusk, it felt like a crime against nature.

There has been little time to contemplate the consequences of the march of technology for our shared public spaces or the etiquette and civic responsibility required to keep up with the changes. Anyone can fly a drone weighing under 2 kilograms for fun or for profit without approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority. By 2021, the global drone market is expected to be worth $12 billion. In 2016, Dominos became the first company in the world to deliver food via drone to a customer when it dropped off a pizza to a home outside Auckland, New Zealand. The CEO said that drones, which can avoid traffic lights and congestion, were ‘the future’ for takeaway-food delivery.

Regulations state that drones should not be flown at night and must be kept at least 30 metres away from people, vehicles, or buildings. But realistically, there’s little we can do in the moment if drones are impinging on spaces we once expected to be places for calm reflection. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority did threaten to issue a $9,000 fine to an enterprising Melbourne man who, in possibly the most Australian crime ever committed, flew a drone to Bunnings to snatch a snag from a sausage sizzle and deliver it to a friend waiting at a nearby outdoor spa. But the organisation only knew about it because the culprit uploaded the footage to YouTube.

In the United States, there are already significant problems in wilderness areas. The National Parks Service banned ‘unmanned aircrafts’ in 2014, but despite the regulations the menace continued, with 325 citations issued since then for unlawful drone use. Rangers have reported that drones are having an impact on the parks’ wildlife, affecting their ability to mate or escape from prey. Just as being plugged into our phones is creating ‘learned deafness’, for these animals, drone noise makes it harder to tune into the sounds of the natural environment. I’m sure this technology is a boon for all the budding David Attenboroughs out there, but surely our native wildlife would be better left in peace, free to roam, unstartled by the intrusion of flying robots?

We can’t halt the march of progress, but just because technology allows us to do something, it doesn’t mean we should. When I learned about the development of the ‘selfie drone’, my first thought was, What fresh hell is this? If you’ve ever tried to take a picture at a popular tourist spot and been whacked on the head by a backpacker trying to get the perfect angle with a selfie stick, you’re going to LOVE this. It’s a pocket-sized robotic camera that syncs with your smartphone and can take to the skies to snap your every move. Retailing at between $300 and $600, it’s perfect for those panoramic Instagram pics and Facebook videos, but I’m not looking forward to a time when every scenic nature spot is abuzz with the hum of flying digital devices. If the selfie drone takes off (pardon the pun) it will be another case of the march of technology outpacing the law.

But this is life in the modern age. It is loud and it is busy. Our challenge is to make room for quiet among the noise. For me, with an inner world that is so often loud and unrelenting in its chatter, I have had to work hard to find that peace. It can be tempting to try to drown out the inner monologue with a different kind of noise. But instead of reaching for podcasts, music, or TV shows every time I have a spare moment, I’m trying not to be always plugged in and just let the gaps be there. Regular meditation is useful. I don’t practise it nearly as much as I could, but even in sporadic bursts it helps slow me down. When excessive noise starts to irritate me I also take to my journal to get to the bottom of it. Often I’ll discover that my fury at a neighbour’s thumping footsteps is not really about the neighbour at all, which makes the noise easier to deal with.

But there are times I’ve craved silence so much I’ve contemplated heading to church to seek sanctuary. Travelling in Europe, I’m always drawn to the medieval cathedrals and abbeys not just for their stunning architecture but also for the echoing silence, and a stillness so complete it feels regenerative. Yet back home, as a devout atheist, setting up camp in God’s house to escape my noisy neighbours feels somewhat uncouth. I can’t reject organised religion then opt in just because they have good acoustics.

But then I found a spiritual space that welcomed unbelievers. It’s a haven of tranquillity right in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. Mingary is one of those hidden secrets you can’t believe you’ve stumbled upon. It’s not really a church, although it’s nestled inside one: St Michael’s Uniting Church at the Paris end of Collins Street. Mingary means ‘the quiet place’ in Scots Gaelic, which made me feel as if this was perhaps my pre-ordained spiritual home. The church’s executive minister, Dr Francis Macnab, opened it as a non-denominational ‘peaceful escape from the hectic demands of city life’ in 1999. In a softly lit room with a handful of wooden chairs and a traumatised rock sculpture in its centre, people from all backgrounds come to find quiet — it is a place to restore a sense of strength and vitality. Dr Macnab told me that Mingary is a sanctuary for people looking to connect with their inner silence, particularly those who have suffered trauma or tragedy. The room has been designed to evoke a sense of healing: ‘There is the trauma of the past in the rock, there is the quietness of the present in the water, and there is the shaft of light on the east wall symbolising a new day for the future.’ He added that for physical and mental health it was vital we take time to listen to our own inner space. Quietness is therapeutic, but takes cultivation.

When I first visited Mingary, late on a Friday afternoon, the sound of my boots click-clacking on the granite floor echoed around the space as I walked to a corner chair and sat down. Opposite me was a middle-aged man in a business suit with a shaved head, hands clasped, eyes shut. A gentle trickle of water flowed down the rock’s face in the centre of the room. Dr McNab said it symbolised ‘the flow of life, by which we are all constantly renewed.’ The water landed in a bowl with two small rocks — a red rock gifted by the descendants of the Wurundjeri people of Australia, and a green marble rock from the Isle of Iona, in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. It was meditative to watch. My brain was busy, as it usually is, but the longer I sat, the more the chatter slowed. That inner space began to open up. I started to connect to that part of myself that is hard to hear amidst the noise of everyday life. Through the heavy wooden doors, I could still hear the sounds of the city. But the quiet was growing within me.