Coming to Terms With Noise
It’s the middle of the first wave of the pandemic and I’ve run out of movies. By now I have a handful of tricks to find new ones, like looking up the director of a film I liked, or just typing movies like x in Google. I settle on one called Phantom Thread by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film is about a fictional 1950s London dressmaker named Reynolds Woodcock (played by Daniel Day-Lewis), who is so possessive of his routine that it drives his lover to poison him in order to get attention.
Sorry if I’ve spoiled it for you.
I’m watching a scene where Woodcock, along with his sister and business partner Cyril (Lesley Manville), are seated at the breakfast table starting their day with an almost oppressive silence. He is engaged in a relaxed meditation with his sketchbook when his newfound lover and muse Alma (Vicky Krieps) joins them and begins loudly buttering her toast and pouring her tea, scraping and clinking. The precious silence is broken.
Woodcock stiffens and I can see the profound irritation settle on his face as his focus is stolen from him. “Please, don’t move so much Alma … it’s very distracting.” Alma counters, “Maybe you pay too much attention to it.” Then Woodcock blows it out of proportion: “It’s hard to ignore. It’s as if you just rode a horse across the room.” After a brief pause and frozen stare of disbelief from Alma, he takes a bite of pastry, throws it down on the plate and leaves the table: “There’s too much movement. Entirely too much movement at breakfast.”
With sister Cyril left to play Good Cop to Woodcock’s Bad Cop, she suggests to Alma that in the future she might take her breakfast after him, or “in your room.” When Alma says he is being too fussy Cyril responds, “This is a quiet time, not to be misused. If breakfast isn’t right it’s very hard for him to recover for the rest of the day.”
Right, I think.
Watching this scene I found myself sympathizing with Woodcock despite the selfishness he levels at poor Alma. His actions are extreme but certainly, I thought, how can one expect to start the day right without the space for quiet reflection? I don’t abuse my relationships for the sake of preserving my routine, but what it got me thinking about was just how hard it can be for introverts like myself to get the quiet space they so desperately need to function at their best, and how for some navigating all the noise and distractions can feel like a lifelong struggle.
The Medicine Is Good
It’s lunchtime pre-quarantine at the bakery where I work, and I take my lunch outside, back to a group of tables in front of the shop where they bake the bread. I decide it’s quiet enough, and settle into my book and a bowl of pozole. After a few bites I catch a familiar shape in the corner of my eye — it’s the man whom I’ve labeled a notorious talker. Another employee is making their way over from the bakery and I can see the talker’s face begin to light up. Unable to wait until they’re close enough he bursts into an excited rattle, laughing and gesturing. That’s my queue, I think.
I quickly gather my things (good at this by now) and head into the bread shop, back to the Inner Sanctuary. It’s a little indoor break room that everyone huddles in when it’s too cold, or raining. It’s also where I find others needing to hide away and recharge. A friend has the room to herself and I’m glad to see her because our breaks rarely line up. “Hiding in the introvert sanctuary?” I ask. “Yes,” she chuckles, “Hopefully a talker doesn’t come in.”
It seems odd that we both work here, we’ve agreed. On a typical day the bakery is jammed with people and is famous for its frustrated walk-outs who have waited too long for their number. It’s noisy and we talk to almost a hundred customers during our shift, often shouting over each other to put together an order.
My friend and I both confess that we love people, but that at the end of the day it’s just too much. I sometimes joke that the medicine is good but the dose is too large. So we find ourselves seeking out the quiet little corners during breaks until some of that medicine wears off. I watch others doing this dance too, disappearing in the bathroom or hiding in their car. A coworker once told me she hated people. I don’t hate people, which is a different kind of challenge because it’s easy for me to take on more than I can handle.
It’s hard to explain this. “I’m a social introvert,” I once told my manager when asking to be trained as a cashier. I wanted more responsibility but was afraid cashiering would lead to more talking. She wasn’t sure what to do with the information. I keep thinking how perfect this job would be if I were doing it about fifty percent less. It’s incredibly satisfying to have my need for social time filled, I just need to get the dosage right.
In The Neighborhood
I’m awakened in my apartment to a sound that, in my dream, I interpret as the muffled drone of a ship’s engine. It’s dark, and as I lie in bed I can still hear the sound, only now it seems more like an irritating buzz. I soon determine it’s coming from somewhere under the floor near my bathroom. When I look at the time on my phone I’ve only been asleep for an hour.
Later I work out it’s a particularly aggressive exhaust fan on the ceiling of the bathroom downstairs, and whenever it gets flipped on the wood floor in my bedroom resonates like the inside of a guitar. In the week I’ve lived here I’ve already resigned to more than enough unexpected noise. The attack dog chained up next door. The subwoofer three houses up cranked so high the windows rattle. The couple across the hall trying to cover up loud sex with even louder music. This fan however, is the deal-breaker.
After a few nights of little sleep I’m writing to my landlord petitioning him to replace the fan with a quieter one. I’m listening to Tom Waits’ song “In The Neighborhood”, which sounds like a sarcastic Edwardian brass band tune you might hear while carrying a parasol on a summer day at the park. In the song Tom sings a list of complaints about his neighborhood like how there’s always construction work bothering him, or how the kids can’t get ice cream ’cause the market burned down. He must be talking about my neighborhood, I decide.
I have to involve civic mediation to get my landlord to look at the fan. He arrives and after listening to my bedroom resonate doesn’t see what the problem is. “The problem is I can’t sleep,” I plead. I ask what he suggests if he won’t replace it. “Suck it up,” he tells me.
Suck it up just means take it. And that’s what I do with the unwanted noises and interruptions. I take them and internalize them. I carry them as stress in my body until I land somewhere quiet enough to release them again. Before moving I invent clever ways to barricade myself in against the noise. I screw plexiglass over the window facing the street. I cover the walls and doors with acoustic panels. I put my bed on risers to get off the vibrating floor. Eventually I move my bed into the living room.
A Little Too Quiet
The wind almost pushes my car off the highway as I drive up the Owens Valley to the place where Los Angeles gets its water. It’s two hundred miles from the city and I drive the whole way with the stereo off. I’m hypnotized by the endless sagebrush and almost miss the sign that marks my turnoff. I’m heading into the foothills to an old family cabin to figure some things out and recharge.
When I arrive I notice how everything about this place feels striking. From the cabin I can see the peaks of the Eastern Sierra standing straight up like a great wall. It’s also quiet enough that I can hear the tires of cars on the highway miles below. I’m reminded of a story I once read about someone who locked themselves inside an anechoic chamber. In the complete silence they were suddenly able to hear the beating of their own heart.
After three nights I finally decide to start sleeping without earplugs, and one morning awaken abruptly to a knock on the front door. I’m afraid to answer it because I haven’t seen another person since last week when I drove eight miles to the post office to get my mail. When I finally get up to look no one is there. I peek out the window just to make sure. Then it dawns on me: I’ve only imagined the knock on the door. In the complete absence of noises and distractions my mind is starting to invent them.
On a sunny day I take my lunch outside to eat. To get a better view I climb the ladder I left up while repainting the cabin, onto the roof. From here I can see over a windbreak up into a creek canyon. I hear the sound of my fork on the plate carrying up the canyon and bouncing off the hills. For fun I shout in the same direction and listen to the echoes. It feels good to hear someone’s voice coming back even if it is my own.
I think about how that must be all any of us really want. To feel ourselves reflected in the world and know that we are here. I wonder then about all the talking, the buzzing, the scraping and clinking. Maybe that’s what noises are — a way to feel the world resonate, like singing in a perfectly tuned shower. Of all the places I’ve lived the resonance has been far from perfect and usually too much. Now sitting here with almost none, imagining a place that’s just right I find myself, for the first time, waiting for someone to ride a horse across the room.
