Silence\u00a0impressed me most when I used to make trips down to Florida. Wandering around the subdivision where I grew up, in the middle of a weekday, was like walking among the dead. With most people at work or otherwise occupied the houses were mostly empty. The streets crackled only with the sounds of leaves and twigs crushed under my feet.<\/p>\n
Silences like this exist in bustling cities, too.\u00a0Some years ago I walked around midtown Manhattan with a field recorder. This type of device is typically\u00a0used for nature recordings on account of its super-sensitivity. That gadget\u00a0picked up every scintilla of sound.\u00a0Conversations taking place half a block away and at perfectly normal volume sounded like they were inside my head.\u00a0Unable to differentiate the importance of one sound over another the device pulled it all in\u00a0in such a way that made a seemingly calm city street sound like chaos.<\/p>\n
When I removed the headphones I was startled at how silent the city seemed. Granted this was not Times Square,\u00a0which is exceptionally noisy. This\u00a0was\u00a0in front of the Time & Life Building on 6th Avenue on a weekday afternoon. Noise came and went, to be sure. Sirens and car horns bleated past like floats in a parade.\u00a0But on balance\u00a0it amazed me how quiet and even serene\u00a0New York\u00a0suddenly seemed to me after hearing its every aural nuance cacophonously\u00a0mashed together.<\/p>\n
Pictures\u00a0from Tampa in 1996 (using\u00a0a Canon ELPH APS film camera) remind me of the silence that surrounds us. I rediscovered these images today. They make me a little sad (as do a great many things), but they also make me certain that the past itself is forever silent. These pictures, properly considered boring by most standards, find me payphone hunting around Tampa and wandering the deserted campus of my high school alma mater.<\/p>\n
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