The sound of silence..
I love silence. I think I write best when it’s all quiet. I find that noise distracts me and my thoughts become more scattered. Much of the time, I prefer the tick tock of the clock and TV and radio turned off. I don’t want distraction, I want concentration.
That’s easier said than done, however. We are assailed by noise and it does me little good. When I write these substacks, I mostly sit in my study, and there is no noise but the tip tap on the keyboard. That’s the way I like it. My best ideas can come to me this way and I can capture the thought quickly and get it down here.
How about you? Do you like silence or perhaps background noise? It’s not that I am like a church mouse during the day. I can drive with my Spotify choices blaring on the car audio system and I like that. I watch a little TV but generally not a lot as 99% of the content on it is dire beyond words. I make a sole exception for the Aussie soap “Home and Away” which amuses me. I listen to many podcasts, I read other substacks and all of this is best done in a quiet environment.
But it’s impossible for me to construct ideas and thoughts when there is a wall of sound around me! When I am out and about, I like the buzz of humanity. It can often help me generate thoughts that I can then take away in my mental notebook and turn into an article. Sometimes that can be a real buzz. I could be sitting in a coffee shop watching the world go by and then just like that - the idea arrives! It’s a fab feeling and there’s time I cannot WAIT to get home so I can then get it down here for you.
To those writers reading this, tell me how you do it, but tell me q-u-i-e-t-l-y!
And BTW David, you are a true artist. You are a very good writer and more disciplined than most. And I can tell that you also have music.
I prefer silence. I have music playing in my head all the time and I don’t like interruptions of that flow so to speak. Im a bit of a hermit with my pets and books. I also swim with my head out of the water. Anytime spent in the forest and the high country above the tree line is the best. I prefer to go it alone. And this leads to enlightenment sometimes. Then i take a picture.