There is no silence where I live. The silence, dear friends, has been conquered by a perpetual skull-meets-metal orchestra; The Noise. Not even earplugs can bring the silence back.
Part 1: Earplugs and Artificial Silence
In times of desperation, I resort to foamy yellow earplugs to combat The Noise. There’s a certain technique to getting them in there all the way, which when properly executed, proves to be quite effective at drowning out The Noise. However, even with the earplugs, there are other sounds that take over. There is this ambient type of sound, similar to that of being under water, which is not silence but more akin to being trapped inside a very loud bubble. Silence, to me, is when all around you there is no sound, for miles and miles. Silence should be open and quiet. It needs to breathe. That is why when I wear earplugs, the silence feels like it’s suffocating. This is fake silence. The only place I have experienced this “true silence” was in the middle of the desert on a calm day.
When wearing the earplugs, I can hear all these bodily sounds I couldn’t hear before; the sound of swallowing my saliva is amplified; I can practically hear myself blink. When I rub my eyes, I can hear the very unsettling squishing sound of my eyeballs being pushed around the eye juice. My breathing reminds me of a snorkeler underwater; inhale, exhale, and a slight whistle through the noise. These are not sounds I want to be hearing. I take out the earplugs and surrender to The Noise.
Part 2: Bishop Street
A. Street Sweepers
Every single morning, be it a holy day or not, the street sweeper makes its grand appearance at precisely 8:12 AM. The sweeper is essentially a very large truck. Thus, when it passes below my window it emits the usual overpowering truck sound: it begins with a dying-vacuum hum that crescendos into a very angry revving and then decresendos back to a dying-vacuum. From my bedroom, the sound reaches its apex when the truck is right below my window, and as it drives away it diminishes again. But this is not all. This truck has super evil gadgets; there must be some kind of giant broom underneath it, harsh bristles that scratch the surface of the asphalt with such rage that I feel personally assaulted every morning it passes. The sound in its whole reminds me of a growl. It’s a rude sound to hear at 8:12 on a Saturday. The streets are clean enough.
B. Car alarms
This is a hilarious sound if you ever have the chance to listen to it in its entirety. There is a certain car alarm that begins with a rapid we-ew we-ew we-ew we-ew which evolves into a very elaborate symphony of honks, sirens, and whistles. At first the sound is annoying, because it’s so déjà-entendu. But then it races into this arcade/pacman trance (the one when pacman is being chased by one of those gobby monsters). Then the alarm sounds slows down, and you think it’s about to quit, but no, it starts making longer sounds, and then randomly starts making a honking sound followed by the grand finale beep beep beep that trucks make when they go in reverse. I think it’s the randomness of the sounds that makes me laugh. The honking really surprises you after all the arcade sounds. I don’t find this particular car alarm annoying; it amuses me. It reminds me of a video game. Some of the sounds are high, some are low, giving a nice balance. Together they create a kind of car alarm song.
C. The Giant Metal Construction Trash Crate
One of the worst sounds I have to endure while living on Bishop street is the sound of the emptying of Concordia’s giant metal construction trash crate. I’m not entirely sure of the exact contents of these crates, but when it is being emptied it sounds like skulls landing in a large empty metal bin. The procedure tends to take place in the early morn. Some big fancy heavy machinery will lift the crate into the air, tilt it to a certain angle, and let the skulls fall onto a metal surface. It’s rude because it’s so unpredictable and irregular. If the skulls landed one after the other, I would be able to anticipate the sound of their landing and it would come as less of a shock. However, they fall haphazardly, causing terror and surprise. It gets worse. Once the skulls have been disposed of, the empty crate is tilted back to its initial position and is slowly lowered. However, whoever is running the lowering-machinery seems to lose control when the crate is a few feet from the ground, letting the hunk of metal crash against the asphalt. The sound echoes through all the layers of the earth, all the way to China. It’s not as cold as metal against metal, but not as warm as an explosion. It’s sharp, yet deep. It makes me want to run outside in my pajamas and cry in front of whoever is causing this apocalypse so early in the morning.
D. Freshmen
I would just like to point out that all these sounds are heard from inside my bedroom, with the window shut.
A final sound that shaped my audio-scape is the sound of Freshmen during Orientation Week at Concordia. They come in heards, like cattle, or those orcs in the Lord of the Rings. They come chanting indecipherable cries of school spirit. There is an ambient sound of constant woo-hooing, the kind you get at the Bell Centre when Bono is in town. Other sounds bleed in and out: girls shrieking (happily), whistling (the kind done using fingers in the mouth), and shouting (male and female). It all blends together, creating some kind of cult-chant. It comes in waves, sometimes faster and louder, something slower and softer, but never stopping. The high pitch screams aren’t as irritating as the deep angry male yells. High sounds seem to sit better with me than deep loud ones do. Maybe my ears are more accustomed to higher pitched sounds.
The sad thing is, I can never eliminate these sounds, I can only cover them up with other sounds, like music or TV. There is never true breathable silence in this bedroom. I’ll have to go back to the desert for that.
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