--- jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net wrote:
> adolescents is every bit as high as the US. Funny
> how the din
> in foreign cities just seems like "atmosphere" yet
> the noise close to home just seems like annoying
> noise.
> Maybe I'm more relaxed on holiday and just let it
> roll off?
Maybe, but there is more into it than the mere volume of noise. It is the kind of noise.
Most places "give off" sounds naturally. If you are in the woods, you hear all kinds of sounds, wind and leves in the wind, birds, animals, screeches, crackings, etc. If you are in a small town there all kinds of natural "living" sounds: sounds of shops working, cars or trains moving, church bells, people talking, dogs barking, etc. A big city also has its natural "living sounds": street cras, buses, hum of traffic, hum of commercial and industrial activities. All these sounds may reach a relatively high volume as measured in decibels, but they all blend into a "white noise" that disappears in the background. It is there, but most people barely notice it.
But there is also different kind of sounds brought to you by modern industry - the specially engineered sounds, sounds designed to grab human attention. These are the sounds of sirens, alarms, advertisemens, music and a myriad of other attention grabbing devices. And it is not even the mere presence of such sounds, but the saturation with them.
If you hear a factory whistle four times a day in an old factory town - it is attention grabbing, but it also stands out of the "white noise" of everyday living, and introduces a certain rhytm that carries a meaning - eg. separates work time from leisure time. But if most that you hear is attention grabbing sounds emited almost constantly - alarms clocks, mobile phones, timers, car alarms, horns, music, warning sounds on trucks and buses, announcements, fire alarms and so on - these sounds create a cacophony from hell that overstimulates human senses and at the end leaves people numb and exhausted. They are like cocaine binges - they stimulate in a short run, but then put you down and require ever increasing doses to even function, let alone feel stimulated.
The suburbia create their own cacophony from hell - but in a different way - by killing all ambient "living" sounds of everyday activities. There is no shop or market noises, no church bells, no people talking, no trains, not even animals - just deafening silence that becomes the norm. That deafening silence is on occassions punctuated by a piercing sound of lawn mowers that are not that loud, but in the context of that deafening suburban silence sound like a chorus from hell.
Of course, this engineered attention-grabbing is not limited to soundscapes - it permeates the visual landscape as well: from "screaming" outdoor ads, to attention grabbing shows, to flashiness and faux sex appeal of attire, to attention grabbing display of everyhting - bigger, brighter, louder, more outrageous - the visual cacophony of overstimulation.
Life in a fast lane? Maybe. Perhaps that life was thrilling and stimualting many years ago, when it was a novelty, but right now it is like the day after cocaine binging - numb, indifferent, exhausted, and irritating.
Wojtek
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