Background Music

Once it was called elevator music, maybe because the only place you heard it was on an elevator. But it has migrated to every corner of the public now. I have noticed that recently, it is no longer a soft, soothing background music. In the rest room of shopping centers and chain stores, the volume is high enough that you could not hold a conversation without raising your voice to be heard and when a sales announcement interupts, forget the conversation. your voice has been drowned out by the announcer.

A few months ago I went into a huge shopping mall and exited a major store into the mall itself and was bombarded by a cacophony of babbling from overhead speakers as well as the swell of voices in the mall itself. I approached a small snack stand to order a hot dog and had to wait for a moment for the end of an announcement and then raise my voice to nearly a shout to speak to the attendant across the counter.

"How do you deal with this all day long?" I asked

He shrugged nonchalantly and said, "You learn to tune it out."

"It makes me want to leave and never come back." I replied.

The major store I had just exited had its own background music, which I could still hear. In the last clothing department near the mall doors was a TV facing the mall. A major sports figure was giving a continual dissertation about an item of clothing and I could hear his voice. (Remind me not to shop in that department or buy whatever he was pushing!!) Back ground music from adjacent stores, the sounds from a rain forest cafe and the overhead mall's background music added to the jumbled mess of indistinguishable gibberish. Add to that the voices of people trying to talk to each other and be heard over the din and the sound was nothing that would encourage me to spend any time here window shopping or any other type of shopping. I only wanted out as quickly as possible in order to hear some semblance of order and find peace and quiet.

I use to like being at the airport prior to a flight. I always bring a book or two and curl up in a quiet corner to get lost in the world between the covers. Even that is no longer possible. Several TV screens have been added to the waiting rooms, each on different channels and each blaring volume to be heard over the others. Airport loud speakers have never been loud and flight announcements are lost in the din of a sports game or news replayed endlessly. I tucked my book away and let my thoughts drift back to a book I'd read years before about how the public would some day in the future be bombarded by propaganda at every turn, never to escape the unending sounds. Then I had thought it would never happen, that people valued peace and quiet. How wrong I was!!

Hospital waiting rooms and doctors offices offer no peace either. A television hangs suspended from a wall usually tuned to a channel I would never watch and now cannot escape. Whether I am waiting for a loved one undergoing some procedure or in pain and not feeling well myself, I am now forced to endure sounds when I'd rather have silence and peace. If I was stressed when I came in, I leave far more so.

Even at home there is no peace. Everyone likes something different and must have the volume turned high enough to damage their own hearing as well as those within the structure. A television in the livingroom plays and replays the same news stories every fifteen minutes 12 hours a day. From the family rooms comes the thrum of sounds from video games or movies played on high def speakers. In a back bedroom, the voice of a country music singer tries in vain to be heard over his own background music.

If you think that peace and quiet can be found in the woods, think again. I have driven back country roads and then hiked to the peak of a mountain, sat down on a protruding rock and watched the world in mineature below and whether I am facing the freeway or on the backside looking down at a tiny lake, the roar of traffic fills the air.

I went to Alaska after a year in the states and laid down in a bed that first night for only a moment before sitting up, listening intently - to the sound of silence. Not a siren, no rumble of wheels on cocrete, no roar or thrum of aircraft overhead, no thudding and bumping of heavily loaded trucks, no squeeling tires, no TV, no loud stereos, no voices. Just blessed silence - the absence of sound.