Individualism; private property; self-reliance; freedom, the rebel-as-hero: keynotes of the American ethos. One characteristic outcome of this sort of thing is the car.

                The car, the traveling home, the metal shield against intrusion, the affirmation of Personal Power (all those guys spending their weekends washing their machines...). The internal combustion engine has since 1900 raised the level of noise in most environments by a considerable amount. The level of noise in cities of today has had some consequences:

sound-proofing in cars has been improved, in order to protect the driver and passengers from the noise the vehicle is making;

the public is being desensitized to noise; the threshold of annoyance has been raised. What is required for this to happen? A heightened level of unawareness of the environment is required. People need to be unaware of where they are. If they were aware it would be too annoying.

                The phonograph and the radio brought music into the home, easing and democratizing access to musical entertainment. Costs to the consumer were lowered, profits to the manufacturers were raised; over all I think earnings to performers have been diminished. Access to music in the home --- then in the car --- subsequently evolved in two directions.
First, the individual was given the means for another defense against urban noise in the form of the “Walkman”, which begat the iPod, which will beget whatever’s next. This also greatly aided the pursuit of separateness, individualism, autonomy, achieving acoustically (and psychologically) what the car provided materially: a barrier. (several women have confirmed my impression that they like to use the iPod as a defense against unwelcome attentions on public transportation).

               This psychological illusion of separateness prepared the way for the private cell phone conversation on the bus, BART, or on the street. A radical denial of the communal nature of urban life seems to have been achieved. The new urban person walks inside a psychic bubble.

                Second, access to music has gone public, in the form of elevator music, restaurant music, grocery store music, department store music, music-on-hold. It is as though a uniform scent, a cheap perfume, now saturates the urban environment. This filmy environment attempts to persuade us that we are having a good time, even if we’re not. Be sure to thank proprietors of businesses that don’t impose this stuff on you.

                 The Muzak Corporation advertises themselves without embarrassment as experts in the psychological uses of music, and they are happy to make available documentation of their successes in using music for purposes of manipulation.　As musicians we know that music has psychological power. We should appreciate what a responsibility we have then for the psychic health of our listeners. As the Muzak examples show, not everyone will be so scrupulous. Music is inevitably enlisted by totalitarian regimes to reinforce their control. Commercials use music to enhance the allure of their deceptions.

                But, thanks to the boundless ingenuity and infinite appetite of American design and manufacture, the power to abuse the public at large by means of music has been granted to every individual. I am referring to car audio systems with overpowering speakers and amplifiers, the ones that rattle your windows and disturb your sleep. The psychological comfort this behavior provides the driver of such a car has not been clearly researched.

                Discussion of the inverse subjects, quiet and silence, involves some very deep issues. First of all, suppose things were such that a high noise level were, somehow, naturally the norm; that our very existence in this universe creates noise; it is only through a conscious act of will that we can reduce the prevailing din; as soon as we cease this action the noise rises up again. The silence, as it were, fades out into noise. This is of course exactly the opposite of the actual situation. Instead of a loud and palpable sensation, noise, the underlying state of affairs is: silence. Only through a conscious act of will do we create a sound; when our action ends, the acoustical disturbance dissipates and we’re back to silence. Silence is the background, silence the horizon, point of origin out of which every sound arises; the vanishing point to which sound returns.

 

Three essential texts:
“The World of Silence” by Max Picard
“The Tuning of the World” by R. Murray Schafer
“Music and Manipulation” ed. by Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgste