Deep Quiet

It’s something that hardly anybody experiences anymore. I go looking for it, and I can’t find it: the deep quiet that comes in the complete absence of all manmade sound. The subsonic rumble of the city pursues us almost everywhere—so pervasive that you don’t even notice it until, suddenly, the weight is gone, the pressure lifts from your ears, and you can breathe. You breathe softly, afraid to disturb the stillness, in which a rock shifting or the step of a chipmunk sounds as loud as the ringing of the phone.

And that is when I hear my muse speak.

Have you ever experienced that? Have you really?

The last issue of Writer’s Digest made me wildly impatient, quoting its “literary hot spots,” in which one of the authors talked about the hiss of espresso machines, the buzz of ambient conversation, and the music playing, and how any author would be in Heaven. A loud, noisy, distracting, bustling coffee shop. The perfect place to write.

Well, whatever floats your boat, people. Whatever. I guess the laugh’s on me, since there are coffee shops on every corner of every city and town, and virtually nowhere is there quiet.

I challenge you—-those of you, particularly, who live in the big cities (by that I mean anything St. Louis sized on up). Find a vacation spot where there is no ambient human noise. Spend a week there. Or a day. Or even an hour. Spend your time sitting quietly, with nothing more than a piece of paper and a pen. And if, at the end of that hour, or day, or week, you don’t feel like a whole new person--full of hope and inspiration and energy--then go back to your coffee shops, your dens of white noise and distraction, and feel free to ignore to the hick Midwestern writer/mother.

And I’ll keep the quiet places for myself, thank you very much.