Sound Up
From the October 2023 issue of ‘Fort Wayne’ magazine.
The essay below was written for Fort Wayne magazine, and included in the publication’s October 2023 “silence”-themed issue.
The quietest place in the world is the Anechoic Chamber, a laboratory located in the depths of Building 87 at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, WA.
Opened in 2015, the room’s sound level rests at -20.6 decibels. (For context: the sound of air particles colliding is -23 dB.)
The Anechoic Chamber is used to measure the sound emitted from Microsoft’s various digital devices—the almost-imperceptible hums of their circuits, fans, currents and so on.
The engineer who helped build the lab, Hundraj Gopal, says that most people imagine that a chamber so quiet would also be peaceful.
However, he reports, once individuals have entered the room, “they want out within a few seconds; it unsettles almost everybody. People find the absence of sound to be deafening.”
Indeed, the room’s visitors can vividly hear their every breath, every swallow, the sound of the blood coursing in their veins, even their joints and bones grinding with every movement.
No one has ever stood in the room for more than an hour. And those who made it to 60 minutes only did so as part of a fundraising challenge for a charity of their choice.
It’s easy to imagine that such a charitable cause must be near and dear to their heart. (The same heart they heard loudly beating about 4,800 times over the course of the hour.)
Sedatephobia is an increasingly common condition that refers to an intense fear (and subsequent panic) due to a lack of noise.
Individuals with this phobia will often do just about anything to disrupt the silence, including banging on random household objects—or simply screaming out loud. These intrusive sounds distract their minds from anxious or upsetting thoughts.
While the phobia is often caused by a traumatic episode early in someone’s life, experts now say that technology is responsible for a rapid rise in our constant need for sounds.
Researching sedatephobia, I found descriptions of the following symptoms:
The notion that when one’s mind is still, anxious ideas will flood it.
A fear of being criticized for being timid when interacting with others.
The desire to avoid dealing with feelings.
A nagging worry that one might come across as weak for being quiet, even though it often takes more courage to be so.
Does that sound—ha ha—like anyone you know?
[Action: The author timidly raises his hand.]
In my life—and quite likely in yours—the sound is always on.
In the office where I work, we have a shared speaker system that’s never not playing music.
The workspace is bustling with sound: collaboration and collisions; scheduled meetings and pop-up conversations; projects, ideas, questions, and answers, and always always always solutions.
If I need a deep space for creative focus—to concept, write, or strategize—I put on my headphones and play ambient and instrumental music.
Before I start at my day job, I have my morning job, as a group fitness instructor at Skyline YMCA. The class I lead is intentionally loud; it’s blaring and boisterous, with music thundering over the sounds of sweat.
Once a week, for my night job, my bandmates and I gather to write and rehearse songs together. Sound is pervasive as we talk, and strum, and sing, and pick, and slap, and harmonize right over top of one another. Most of all and always, there is relentless laughter.
And in the evenings and through the weekend, as the father of three luminous kids—my most important role—our voices motor straight through the melodies of the kitchen, the homework, the video games, the playlists, the TikToks and Reels, the arguments and the celebrations.
So, of course I seek moments of peace, moments of respite.
Those coveted moments: The wee AM hours, when I’m the first and only one awake.
At dusk, when I’m making a simple dinner for one, or tidying the place up before settling in with a book.
On a reverent weekend morning, out on my mountain bike at the Franke Park trails.
And, forever, alongside the river on my daily early-morning run.
These moments of peace, these moments of respite—they’re sacred.
I’m chasing them.
And yet.
I take those sacred moments of peace, those sacred moments of respite, and I fill them.
Front to back, top to bottom, beginning to end—I fill them with sound.
Anything but silence: Songs. Albums. Playlists. Podcasts. (So many podcasts.) Even the occasional audiobook.
True silence, at this point, is downright shocking to me, and I actively evade it.
It might be the same for you.
If so, why? Why do we do this? For me, it started with avoidance.
Silence used to give me a chance to daydream. Now it gives me a chance to worry.
I come from a long line of worriers, balancing on a thin line between excitement and dread.
Life accumulates for us all. We’re drowning in responsibilities. Being a parent is more challenging every day; so is being a child. And frankly, so is being a member of society.
I avoid addressing (and worrying about) these very-apparent facts by distracting and distancing myself with sound.
Let me be clear: I haven’t found avoidance to be all that healthy. Sure, it’s a way to survive. But it’s no way to grow.
So in the lead-up to writing this essay, I decided to take one day a week when I would go for a run without headphones.
One day when I didn’t turn on the car stereo.
A day when the Bluetooth speaker didn’t get turned on moments after I woke up, when it didn’t follow me from kitchen to bathroom to living room as I got the day started.
And a remarkable thing happened.
Instead of not preparing for a challenging conversation, I played out different scenarios and outcomes in my mind, and went forth with confidence.
Instead of scrambling in the moment, I thought ahead about something sweet, something thoughtful.
Instead of listening to someone else’s songs, I started dreaming up rollicking refrains for my own band’s songs.
Instead of insisting on solving a creative conundrum in real-time later that day, I gave myself the space to let solutions simmer and organically grow, making connections between divergent ideas, and feeling much more clarity and confidence.
What I found was a place where I could hear myself again.
Where I could hear how I’ve changed. Hear opportunity. Hear what I’m struggling with. Hear the perspective of a more mature, more disappointed, more appreciative person—myself. And hear the places where I could take steps toward atonement, gratitude and growth.
When one exits Microsoft’s Anechoic Chamber, Hundraj Gopal’s team describes the feeling as such:
“It’s like a waterfall of sound is hitting your ears. Like you’re stepping into a different world. It gives you a new perspective.”
A new perspective, through silence?
Now that’s the sound I’ve always been chasing.
I’m grateful to the team at Fort Wayne magazine and Fort Wayne Newspapers Inc. for the opportunity to contribute to this issue. My previous essay for the magazine is available HERE.
Wow, man. What a great rumination on sound - the celebration of it is easy to do - the examination of it in our lives is hard. Good read, brother!
Thanks for sharing, Matt. Cassie read it aloud for us as we were driving up to Chicago, which was an interesting approach to an essay on sound. (Though we did it more for convenience than artistry.) The writings and meditations of Thomas Merton have always had an impact on me, along with Zen Meditation. I even visited Merton's monastery in Kentucky. A formative trip. Thanks for sharing your own meditations on silence, and how hard it can be to find. While listening to it I found myself thinking about my own preferences relating to sound, and how they are not universal. I wouldn't be able to work in an environment that had music all day, but others might thrive in such a place. Sound impacts us differently. I also know I love what Pamela Druckerman called a "convivial solitude." To be on on my own but also surrounding by people: big city parks, for instance, are my favorites. Good work, and congrats on the publication!