Silence — I pay a considerable amount each month to avoid it. Amongst my friends I am probably the least invested in telecommunications. I have basic cable that provides me with 300 channels, of which I watch three percent. I had a XM Radio, but cancelled it. I retain a smart phone with no Internet, and a landline to receive paid political endorsements and DSL.
There is the iPod touch in my briefcase and a couple of old iPods I know not where. Then there are the legacy components: CD player, cassette deck, tube amps, turntable and a reel-to-reel. Oh, did I forget to mention the newsletters, magazines, newspapers and books. It is a struggle to keep up.
My first memories of media are with Aunt Sarah. I lived above Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bob in the two flat that our families shared. Before day care existed, she did her best to watch her son John and me. It was not an easy job, but it was made easier in the mid 60’s when Uncle Bob bought a tiny black and white TV in a fancy wooden cabinet. The screen was the size of an open paperback book. It was my introduction to the warm glow of a cathode ray tube. I remember staying up late to watch the moon landing and skipping naps in the afternoon to watch Captain Kangaroo.
A few years later I got into the act by buying a baby blue AM radio. I taped it to my bike’s handlebars, and rode around the neighborhood listening to rhythm and blues beamed from the South Side of Chicago. These memories are part of me. I cannot deny their influence. They compete for space in my mind along with the present electronic chatter.
Creativity follows an ephemeral thread that begins with inspiration. It fights to be noticed above the foreground noise. With all the distractions the best ideas are the ones that get away. One day I had a revelation while watching Seinfeld. I noticed that he kept paper and pencil by the side of his bed. If an idea stirred him, he captured the errant thought before it escaped. This simple practice comforted me. I started to carry some type of recording device, stopped wasting my time trying to recall missed ideas and got to work imagining new ones.
A friend’s autographed photograph from Phillip Roth caught my interest. Roth is his favorite author and this was all the endorsement I needed to start reading his novels. They center on a fictional character named Zuckerman. We follow him as he struggles to become a successful author. At the beginning of the third novel he is financially independent, in chronic pain, divorced three times, and unable to write.
His creative process has waned. He cannot reconcile the isolation of his chosen profession. For him silence is maddening. It takes courage to seek out quietude and confront one’s thoughts. Introspection is not always welcomed. All kinds of thoughts can surface. They can inspire, confront, be demonic or heavenly, freeing or imprisoning. Take your pick.
I have a visceral understanding of this. In my late teens I pulled together three hundred bucks to buy my first car. With it I left on a solitary journey out west. My first stop was Las Cruces, NM to meet up with two high school friends who were spending the summer re-enacting Easy Rider. We covered vast distances in a month of wandering. Finally it was time for me to return home. We split up at the Grand Canyon. I turned right and they turned left.
The trip home lacked the anticipation that kept my mind occupied during the start of the adventure. I was left with too much windshield time in an old VW beetle that was slowly tearing itself apart. I will skip the details other than to say I got very squirrelly in the week it took me to get home. I never had to deal with only myself for so long. It was not pretty, but it served a purpose.
By the time I drove up to my house on Campbell Avenue I had gained confidence. I got the car home — no small feat in itself — and along the way work through many adolescent issues. It was not a complete success, but it was a start. I am still working on it, searching for that silent moment, whether it be staring out a windshield or sitting in a quiet kitchen after midnight.
Volume 5796 (4), 2/19/2010
