Hear and there!
The sound you don’t like becomes noise for you. However, it doesn’t change the fact that your authority on what is music and what’s noise remains questionable. Your preference is yours and yours alone. Nobody else can dictate your aural taste. All the songs you enjoy say a lot more about you than they say about themselves. And despite these mental tunings in place, we tend to assume that there has to be some sort of uniformity in what is supposed to be heard in public.
In an ideal world, there should be no noise whatsoever. At least none emanating from human sources.
Absolute silence, if you may.
But then, we don’t reside in an ideal world. In fact, what we have at our disposal is far from ideal. Our society remains fragmented and words can be extremely divisive. Under such a thick paint of exclusivity, one can only wonder the role played by noise.
I recently learnt that Stamford Bridge, home stadium of Chelsea FC, had banned celery. On digging deeper, I learnt that this measure was taken for two reasons — one was to stop the fans from throwing sandwiches onto the pitch and another was to discourage a vulgar chant involving celery being unceremoniously inserted into an opponent’s rectum. Although the ban proved to be effective over time, can we employ this method toward all noisy scenarios?
The answer is an emphatic no. More often that not, noise have a way with people. For instance, in a sprawling city, nobody really complains about the honking vehicles on the road. Why? Because they themselves honk a lot and if they don’t, the vehicles they use for transportation does. When you drive and smoke on a daily basis, you lose your right to be pissed about climate change. Obviously, the noise from your broken moral compass ceases to bother you. That’s life. That’s compromise of the highest order.
Even on a closer range, people show immense bias towards what they consider music and what they’d debar as noise. While watching your favourite TV show, the volume might be at level 9 but you won’t acknowledge, let alone rectify, the distress it’s causing in those who live under the same roof but happen to dislike the show. This insensitivity is more cultural than sensational as we aren’t evolved enough to understand the damage we inflict on others on a daily basis.
The table turns when you visit a noisy bar and are trying to funnel a conversation with your friend. It’s 2018 and we still don’t know why they play inexcusably loud music at places where people are meant to socialize. Maybe, that’s institutional karma. You inflict noise on others. Others return the favour on a greater scale.
It’s impossible to refrain from mentioning religion while we’re discussing noise. Noise might have no religion but religion can’t do with noise. Almost all major religions depend on the reach of their noise to reinforce their dominance in public sphere. From the gonging bells to loudspeaker-ed prayers, it’s unimaginable to separate R from N. The only difference lies in the way an adherent reacts to foreign noise. He might be OK with night-long satsang in his colony but the cells in his ears magically die when the namaaz is periodically transmitted throughout the day. [Sidenote: The only cells that don’t regenerate are located in our ears unless we’re talking about cancer.] Conversely, a person could be a heavy metal fan but can find the bhajan-heavy commuters on Mumbai train local unbearable.
There’s no escape from this selective conundrum. Yet, it’s advisable to choose your noise carefully.
