When you’re spending all day, every day, alone with your own thoughts – you can’t help but to learn a few things about yourself… and Enjoying the Silence, is difficult.
If Pied Piper is Tables, MarlowDesigns is levels. (I’ve rewatched “Silicon Valley” again. You can tell, can’t you?)
Noise, it all its various categories, is something that can be sculpted, honed, and turned into an experiential asset rather than a detriment in design. As an architect, I grasp the importance of sound transmission and mitigation.
As a music fan, I’m fully aware of what I enjoy, what I’m not as fond of, and the stuff that hits me in a visceral place and causes an emotional reaction. I’m also familiar with the infinite gradients in between and how each can either enhance or detract from one’s mood.
But dead, absolute silence is something that I don’t endure well in a closed setting.
I added ‘closed setting’ because I’m also the same guy who’s been known to grab his camera bag and sit motionless in the weeds waiting for the natural world to get back to its normal state without knowing or caring I’m there – but that’s entirely situational.
I’m speaking to more of how I work and deal with focusing thoughts.
In the every day typical open office environment – most everyone was plugged in to their own noise & thought isolation systems. Myself included. Nothing kills off the background noise of the people sitting next to you BS-ing about the last episode of “Game of Thrones”, better or faster than a sound bubble of your own choosing.
When the focus needed an increase, you switch over from an audio book or podcast to something with a driving beat, and the volume went up.
For me – as much as coffee is responsible for architecture, its driven by music and the right noise bubble at the opportune moment.
Now in that environment, an acceptable level of background conversation is just fine. But what happens when you remove that layer of passive human interaction – and then don’t hit the play button?
That’s when I find myself getting anxious and more animated. Walking around the house, talking to myself, thinking out loud as I get my steps in.
Ever done this one?
You’re driving along looking for a street address or a parking space. The first thing that you do is turn the radio down.
Its not going to increase the likelihood of finding something sooner, but it does remove a layer of distraction away from the focused objective.
Now how about when you don’t have access to that volume knob? Ohhhh that’s a problem. Control over your immediate environment is a larger deal than some may even realize.
Try living in a downtown environment in the Twin Cities with street racers setting off fireworks, automatic weapons (not kidding) and laying down as much rubber on asphalt as they can in under 5 minutes – like destroying tires is an achievement. Or the chases, sirens, crashing cars, neighbors yelling, shots fired in the distance, etc. There are weeks where I’ve been fully aware that levels of outside stresses like this are impacting my behavior, and not in a positive way.
The other night, I’m helping my girlfriend try and trouble shoot reinstalling the OS on her Mac. Fine, but there’s a hang-up in the process and error messages that I’m trying to research & navigate – while she keeps jumping steps. Add to that, the guy downstairs picks now of all times to have his 3-5 piece band over for a session . I guess the guitarist couldn’t make it – but things were getting tense all of a sudden.
Can’t hear the YouTube video explanation (because no one does static words on a screen anymore), can’t seem to focus on what I’m reading… I was getting stressed.
Now, consider for a moment that you’ve got autism, with a side order of hyperacusis. Your hearing is rated higher than your pets. That world is a constant assault on your senses, and the sound bubble necessary to isolate your situation needs 5-6 layers to it to allow you to focus on anything. Every day. All the time. (Not me, a member of my family).
As a based element of the human condition, control over that environment is important. We do a lot of weird things to extend or contract personal comfort zones, and for me – sound or the lack thereof – is a big deal.
My life is usually one that bounces between extremes. Deadline? Disappear from society. So much and so often over the years that I’m a stranger to my own family and friends – let alone to social media.
These days, absent of the layer of office sounds or much human interaction – I find myself reaching out more. And if you know me – that’s outside of my usual character.
One thing that I’ve always known on some level is that sound has always been an important part of mental health and well being.
Without it occurring naturally – I’m binge-listening to television shows, podcasts, and whatever else I can find that’s a substitute for human interaction.
The criteria for this noise, is that it has to be something that I can half ignore while being able to do other things. If its something that I haven’t heard or listened to before that requires focus – well that occurs during specific break times from whatever I’m working on.
I don’t know if anyone else has similar findings, but for me – being nestled into a sound bubble of my own making has been a vital part of my ability to navigate whatever this new environment is.
I can and will say, that I’m starved for human interaction and discussions in the AEC environment. I miss that layer of people talking, interacting even over a screen share, and talking about aspects of design in the microcosm of creating things.
There’s precious little keeping me from hitting the broadcast button on a Twitch channel just to try and get some of that back.
Although – I’m reasonably certain that without background music or interaction of some sort that the return to silence would be inevitable, and difficult to navigate.
We shall see. Back to podcasts and chill while I try to figure out how to build a sales platform for this site.
Cheers.
JM
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