Listen! Nothing! I live in the middle of the city, and I have my windows open on this beautiful day, despite the cold. If I listen harder, it’s still nothing, not even the resident magpies in the trees, for now. Oh there, the vague sound of a train, and now, the hospital helicopter in the distance, but nothing from the street, even although I see cars and people go by from my window. The stillness of a silent order of a religious community. How does it happen? Ah! There go the magpies, with their krikking and krakking chatter, breaking the silence with their bold impudence, characteristic of how they stroll around the lawn — their realm, I suppose, with the wide variety of insects and grubs they find there, although a little nonplussed by squirrels, when they are around.
Bristol is a city spread over a wide geographical area, having initially swallowed many of the villages surrounding it, but there remains multiple mini communities like the working-class Bedminster comfortably rubbing shoulders with the gentrified Southville, the rich elderly and the poor students creating an uneasy alliance in what is still called Clifton Village and St Pauls rising out of deprivation to create a strong, Afro-Caribbean, second generation population, with new enterprises, and the traditional carnival each summer. Overall, the city has grown into a city of tolerance and diversity, with an arts scene to match.
But this is a city, and ultimately, a city has so many sources of noise, with construction, trade, sirens, traffic congestion, children playing, thrumming of machines, speaker phones on revving buses, trains rumbling into stations and just generally people getting on with their lives.
Just as busy are those of us who choose to comment on the noise, such as Seneca in Rome, in the first century of the common era, where he spent some time dismissing noise as of no concern, only to conclude with “I shall shortly be moving elsewhere” (1). Richard Steele, in contrast, in the late 17th century finds great pleasure in the hustle and bustle of ‘Twenty Four Hours in London’ (2). In a similar vein, although examining isolation about 100 years later, Samuel Johnson largely concluded that those who withdraw in isolation “desert the station which Providence assign them” (3).
Somewhat closer in the 20th century, Joan Didion writes about her experiences in New York (4) which began as a love affair with the city, and some years later became a matter of despair, but her solution was to move to Los Angeles, a different city, but for her, a better city to be in — a bit like my own journey from London to Bristol. I never found a way to regularly engage with either silence or isolation when I was living in London.
Here in Bristol, my flat is about 150 feet away from the pavement, and in the space between, there is only garden, with large spreading lawns and shrubbery borders, making-up the communal gardens of a housing plot for older people. Within my flat, there are some big disadvantages like the awful storage heaters, the lack of windows in the bathroom and the kitchen, and the tiny size of the kitchen itself, but the huge advantage of living here is the silence brought to me by that space between the building and the pavement and road outside.
For me, it is a great treasure. For it is that which brings the silence. But, of course, silence is not really silence. There is the ticking clock, the rumble of the freezer, the spinning of the washing machine, the chatter of my neighbours, the music they listen to and the TV that they watch, but these are all sounds I can filter out. And in the late night or the early morning, they are sounds that are rarely heard. Thus, silence is often the absence of sounds that we know we will hear. Neighbours waking, birds singing, walking down the drive to the pavement and road where we discover the silent movie of people and cars passing by is not so silent after all. And so it is that we come to recognise that silence is defined by the absence of what came before, and the anticipation of what will come later.
And we use the one word of silence to define different states such as loneliness, isolation, tranquillity, peace, lockdown, solitary confinement, contemplation. For each form of silence there is likely to be an emotional response accompanying it, some very positive, such as during meditation, but equally some very negative such as loneliness, solitary confinement, lockdown or social isolation. And it is these that can have a deteriorating effect on our mental health. Certainly, there are many of those who had to shield during the pandemic who report experiencing mental health problems long after shielding has ended.
My own experience of life after shielding has been one of substantial change. I discovered two main things during the pandemic. I was already living a fairly hermit-like existence prior to the pandemic, although I would think nothing of going anywhere and everywhere on the bus within the city, including going to work in an open plan office. But I was beginning to have some serious doubts about this style of working, and regular bus travel, following hospitalisation just before the pandemic, where I had flu, pneumonia and exacerbation of asthma, and being on 7 litres of oxygen during most of my 9-day hospital stay. Thus, when the pandemic hit, and I was told to engage with the rules of shielding, I welcomed it, and rigidly adhered to the rules, and found that I really liked the experience, apart from the burden placed on other people as a result.
The second thing I learned was that there was a significant increase in my respiratory health during the period of isolation and, I surmised, as a result of not travelling on the buses, and not working in a busy open-plan office. I was then able to successfully request that my working from home, commenced during isolation, be continued on an ongoing basis.
My life has changed. Writing group that began in the library continued online from the onset of the pandemic, and I understand that it still takes place online, and has not returned to the library setting. The substantial changes for me have been in employment and transport arrangements, but otherwise not much has changed. I still go out to do all the essential things like supermarket, GP surgery, library, pharmacy, but I very rarely go to the cinema (and only during the day at times when there are very few there). I mostly don’t go in pubs or restaurants, or have much of a social life, but all of that is no different from before the pandemic. I meet up with my family and chat to my neighbours, but otherwise, I am that hermit who reads, writes, learns, meditates and deals with the domestic chores between times.
I live alone, but I am not lonely. Nor am I socially isolated, with family close-by. I enjoy silence, and I consider it to be a valued companion. It allows me to think clearly, to take time to consider decisions, and it keeps me company in a comforting way when I have turned-off tv, radio, music streaming or online video. It allows me the opportunity to desensitise myself from the multiple forms of constant stimulation that exist in the 21st century.
And so it is that I enjoy the silence of my flat when I don’t want audio or audio-visual entertainment, I appreciate that space between my flat and the road to the external world of the city as a whole. I know how fortunate I am to live in what is an oasis, or what I call my island of silence. And I know that other people will find their own islands of silence, whether in permanent accommodation or in temporary states of altered consciousness, or just taking a breath when the rest of the household has gone out, and only one person is at home.
I feel like I have all the benefits of the city such as efficient services, good hospitals and lots of entertainment (if I chose to take it up), and simultaneously have the isolation and silence of a more tranquil environment, too. And as I live in an area of Bristol that is almost like a village within the city, I can live the quieter lifestyle that I have come to enjoy so much, and which I feel I will appreciate more and more as I grow older.
- Seneca, ‘On The Art of Noise’, p 8 in Lopate, Phillip, ‘The Art of The Personal Essay’, New York: Anchor Books
- Steele, Richard, ‘Twenty Four Hours in London’, pp 129–132 in Lopate, Phillip, ‘The Art of The Personal Essay’, New York: Anchor Books
- Johnson, Samuel, ‘The Solitude of The Country’, p 144 in Lopate, Phillip, ‘The Art of The Personal Essay’, New York: Anchor Books
- Didion, Joan, ‘Goodbye to All That’, pp 681–688 in Lopate, Phillip, ‘The Art of The Personal Essay’, New York
Fraser
December 2023