White Noise
Now that we are unmistakably moving through November, the fall season will steadily loose its luster for me as we move towards winter. There is however, one pivotal moment that occurs typically in November that seems to almost make up for how crappy a month it tends to be for the other 29 days--the first snowfall.
I remember one time on campus at Scarborough College, I was in a class when we experienced on of the many 'brown-outs' that were common in that part of the city. During this one particular power outage, those of is in class were witness to something very unusual and very special. We heard the building 'powering down'. Once this happened we all realized how much background noise we had been processing out of our minds. We traded what we perceived to be relative silence for the real thing, and as you likely already know...actual silence is deafening. The brilliance of all this was in the symbolic value of the building 'shutting down'. The campus buildings were places we all went to perform tasks. Even when those tasks were things like training yourself to become critically aware of your surroundings, the constructs in which these activities took place: the row seating, the filling in and out like cattle, the repetition of the same routines over and over again, seemed almost to overpower any budding critical awareness. For me, going to class was as automatic as brushing my teeth or scratching my balls. I began to think of myself (and every other student in there) as merely another 'system' in the superstructure of the building. We were much bigger and clunkier particles flowing through the building than, say, dust mites in the ventilation system, but we operated in the same way. But something happened when the power went off. If the dust mites were surprised at all when they unilaterally hit the sheet metal of the lifeless duct system, the deafening thunderclap of actual silence slapped us all awake and out of our automated reveries. For the first time, I felt, in my then still young university career, I felt like I was having a truly interactive conversation in class. All it took was a little quiet.
If I am lucky enough to be outside during the first major snowfall (and I usually make it my business to do so), I sort of feel the same thing on a grander scale. The whole world quiets down and one can't help but be jolted into the moment by the surprisingly obvious quiet (interrupted perhaps by that awesome crunching sound that snow makes under winter boots). It's easy to feel like a robot, or that you're on autopilot through so much of our waking lives. I learn this truth over and over again each time I get up to go to work. But its hard not to feel the vitality in life when the forces of automation all simultaneously fade out from that barely perceptible portion of our hearing that records their various machinations.
The first snowfall will be upon us soon. Don't forget to go have a listen.
Now that we are unmistakably moving through November, the fall season will steadily loose its luster for me as we move towards winter. There is however, one pivotal moment that occurs typically in November that seems to almost make up for how crappy a month it tends to be for the other 29 days--the first snowfall.
I remember one time on campus at Scarborough College, I was in a class when we experienced on of the many 'brown-outs' that were common in that part of the city. During this one particular power outage, those of is in class were witness to something very unusual and very special. We heard the building 'powering down'. Once this happened we all realized how much background noise we had been processing out of our minds. We traded what we perceived to be relative silence for the real thing, and as you likely already know...actual silence is deafening. The brilliance of all this was in the symbolic value of the building 'shutting down'. The campus buildings were places we all went to perform tasks. Even when those tasks were things like training yourself to become critically aware of your surroundings, the constructs in which these activities took place: the row seating, the filling in and out like cattle, the repetition of the same routines over and over again, seemed almost to overpower any budding critical awareness. For me, going to class was as automatic as brushing my teeth or scratching my balls. I began to think of myself (and every other student in there) as merely another 'system' in the superstructure of the building. We were much bigger and clunkier particles flowing through the building than, say, dust mites in the ventilation system, but we operated in the same way. But something happened when the power went off. If the dust mites were surprised at all when they unilaterally hit the sheet metal of the lifeless duct system, the deafening thunderclap of actual silence slapped us all awake and out of our automated reveries. For the first time, I felt, in my then still young university career, I felt like I was having a truly interactive conversation in class. All it took was a little quiet.
If I am lucky enough to be outside during the first major snowfall (and I usually make it my business to do so), I sort of feel the same thing on a grander scale. The whole world quiets down and one can't help but be jolted into the moment by the surprisingly obvious quiet (interrupted perhaps by that awesome crunching sound that snow makes under winter boots). It's easy to feel like a robot, or that you're on autopilot through so much of our waking lives. I learn this truth over and over again each time I get up to go to work. But its hard not to feel the vitality in life when the forces of automation all simultaneously fade out from that barely perceptible portion of our hearing that records their various machinations.
The first snowfall will be upon us soon. Don't forget to go have a listen.
posted by Kevin at 10:57 p.m.
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