The world is noisy. The radio wakes me up, I stand on a bus with a hundred others packed together, I stand on a train with a thousand. Headphones and telephones. Even when the crowds are quiet the machines are loud. The traffic is loud. Engines huff and tracks scream. Storefronts blare advertising. Products insist themselves between my television programs. Between songs. They shout from billboards. Twenty minutes of obnoxious building-sized commercials, market-driven cacophony, before every movie. Blaring at my trapped eyes. On a platform yesterday: a moving billboard, a car driving behind the Central Line, showing off.
I like the quiet.
A common question for writers is what music they listen to while writing. For me it's a useless question. Music? While writing? Give me two inches of solid oak, and earplugs between me and anything else. A conversation in the next room can be distracting, let alone a song.
A book is the antithesis of all these things. Books don't shout at me. However rude their covers, when opened (or switched on) they are smooth, pale pages with subtle tracks of language. The gentle swish of a turning page, or no sound at all as I press a small button. My mind trickles into the story, into the world created years ago by the author, nudged to life now by my attention. Even a yell on the page is tempered to the volume of my thoughts. They dissolve the chaos around me. I am concentrated into the page.
Ahhh.
I used to believe in the transcendence of storytelling from one medium to the next. Discussing a favourite television show, or film, in the same breath as my favourite book. And the story, yes, maybe something in the story can survive the noise and chaos. But the mediums have diverged. In the television and movie worlds it's all advertising. It's all about how much can be force-fed through your eyes. You pay your money for the film, you pay for cable, you buy the DVD, and you still spend half your time with ads. The brainwash of the visual.
Yesterday news broke that Odeon, and perhaps other theatres, will boycott Alice in Wonderland because Disney isn't giving them enough weeks before the DVD. Odeon says the reduced time will hurt small theatres. Disney want it to go to DVD sooner so they can "beat piracy." Everyone needs to be paid.
Writers want to be paid too, of course, but no one grabs you by the throat and beams popcorn ads into your eyes before you're allowed to crack the cover.
Unsurprisingly, I could not have less interest in vooks if they came with a free smack to the head.
Give me the quiet any day.
Oh this post resounds with me on so many levels at the moment Jen.
ReplyDeleteMy normally quiet and peaceful street has turned into a demolition/construction site over the past three weeks as the house next door to use is raised, extended and built in under. I wake now every morning to the sound of boots crunching on gravel, trucks or strange (well OK - they're becoming familiar) voices or the sound of something banging.
I realise now how much I miss my peace and quiet.
For me, yes, I do listen to music when I write and I have a selection of music I specifically use to write to. The strange thing is, after the first song it bleeds into a silent background as I become immersed in what I am writing. The music is really just the kick start - which sends me out of this world and into the next.
However, when I read... well that's a different matter all together. Yes it has to be quiet (and when you're a Mum it is amazing the places where you will seek quietness?!) I don't listen to music, I don't read infront of the TV (with a few exceptions, I'm not a fan of the TV) or movies. My reading time is precious and as such... I try to honour it.
I sympathize so very much, Jodi. It's one thing to leave the house and find chaos but being starved of peace and quiet right in your home is torture. I hope they're finished with the construction soon! It'll seem like paradise when they're gone.
ReplyDeleteI understand letting the music kick start writing. For my first NaNo novel I listened to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack over and over and over... I should probably pay someone for the inspiration it gave me. I'm not sure how my writing habits changed but now it's silence or nothing.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Jen. I used to thrive on noise and chaos—Christmas crowds were a big rush. When I lived in New York City, I played a game as I walked to work: How high could I count before hearing a car honk? (Record: 7. That’s right—7 seconds between car honks. Average: 3.)
ReplyDeleteNow I crave the quiet. As you said, so much of the noise is visual, intrusive, overwhelming. The advertising. (Note the root similarity between "advertise" and "adversary." Hmmm.) I can’t write to music either. These days I find that the fewer things I do at a time, the better I do whatever I’m focused on.
Thank you to my beloved books for giving me sanctuary. And to you, Jen, for expressing these thoughts so eloquently.
(I hope you didn’t get this twice. A glitch happened the first time I tried to write it.)
So well said/written. I go later and later to the movies, so I don't have to be assaulted by Honda and National Guard commercials. The book. Nothing like the book.
ReplyDeleteClaire, a honk every 3 seconds? Wow. I'd heard that about NYC but having it confirmed makes me worry if I'd go a little crazy just walking down the street!
ReplyDeleteGood catch on the "advertise" vs. "adversary" similarity. Hmm! Now my brain is planning a story about the devil in charge of an advertising company... oh dear. ;)
Thanks, Eric.
ReplyDeleteNational Guard, hey? I guess that's an international thing: advertising joining the army no matter what country you're in. But why?! Do good soldiers see a lot of films?
Oh, give me the quiet any day too (and the stack of books).
ReplyDeleteYou captured so many of the things I love about reading in this post, Jen--and your commentary about the barrage of marketing and ads were under constantly in other forms of media was spot on--and one of my biggest frustration with movies.
I hope you get to sink in between the quiet sheets tonight! :)
p.s. I want to read your advertising/adversary story! :)
ReplyDeletePicking up on the bombardment of advertising - in a sci-fi world I am creating - it is a versin of news which is the bombardment. Every where, 24 hours a day, flicking up useless, uninteresting footage.
ReplyDeleteMy partner calls it 'The Propaganda of the Irrelevant' - a term he bounced off some musing from Aldous Huxley about the place of propagand in the modern world.All the advertising and brain numbing TV shows keeping the masses amused and anaethatised (a bit like a modern day version of the Colleseum?)
Yes... give me the quiet, ad free, smokefree bliss of a book anyday.
Ev, the barrage of media has recently convinced me that I should only see a film in the cinema if I really, really, really, really have to-- even if there is a great and wonderful theatre available. And you know that for me that's a pretty big thing. I'm just tired of being treated the way cinemas have decided is "The Movie Experience."
ReplyDeleteJodi, I don't know that I'd survive in your sci fi world. I'd end up living in the wilds of BC with an ancient typewriter and a vegetable garden.
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