The song, "The Sudden Clamor of Silence," a song I wrote long ago that remains one of my most favored (at least musically), is lyrically about the interregnum of existence I've struggled to accept my entire life. This is a place I envision as a "void of substance" -- as in a void with substance, an oxymoron that makes perfect sense to me. I've always felt as though I'm on an alternative plane in space and time that's intangible in understanding, inaccessibility, and incomprehensibility to others. I'm not claiming this to be an enlightened or desirably envious place, however. It's not one for ego; rather, this is a desolate, inhospitable, and deeply personal void -- think Superman II where the three villains are imprisoned within that comical, if not painfully 1980s-looking gyroscopic glass prison. Minus two other intergalactic criminals, this is a void populated only by me. Yet, I find comfort in this "space" akin to the syndromic comfort found in Stockholm. We all have our neuroticisms to which we take comfort despite their hostility, and this void is certainly mine. In the song, this oxymoronic "clamor of silence" is intended to illustrate the clamor of non-existence I feel relegated to exist within every day. It's a noisy, desolate silence for me, whether in conversation, seemingly mundane daily choices, or even in love. Nonetheless, the silence of this existence is as deafening as it is comfortable. There is substance in its void.
The COVID-19 social lockdown is, on the contrary, literally quiet. It's ironic because for nearly forty years I've sought silence by retreating inward. But for the first time there's quiet -- literal quiet -- outside. I would be mistaken for an introvert typing such things, but I'm certainly not. Despite an Ivy League resume of highly referenced introverted skills and experiences, I'm an extrovert. Being social is often what cures my boredom of myself, or perhaps feigning introversion cures my overwhelmed astonishment at my underwhelming astonishment of mundane human interaction. It's likely all of the above. At any rate, the droll hum of banal human activity has abandoned my senses for months now, vacated by a nano-size glob of fat, protein, and ribonucleic acids we call a virus. I have suddenly found myself within a generationally rare opportunity to examine what the clamor of this sudden silence can educate about noise.
The deafening of this outside silence has sharpened my senses. Perched like a vigilant, albeit well-wined-and-dined bird atop my northwest Portland balcony, I've noticed the breath of breezes nudging aside leaves, the impact of a fallen nut upon concrete from a clumsy wire squirrel (I didn't realize squirrels could be clumsy), and the distant engine whine of a lone plane arguing with no one for a landing at PDX airport. I wonder if the air traffic controller told the pilots to pick any runway they want. I wonder who's even on that plane, or perhaps it's just students practicing taking off and landing with empty jets. I notice the pastels of the lengthening sunsets we've (somehow suddenly) transitioned towards in approach to the summer solstice. I look down and imagine pedestrians' visual tracers as they dodge each other like repellant magnets. An exposed image of this peculiar behavior would look like an algebraic lesson in hyperbolic mathematics. Even taste is accentuated as I dole takeout sushi across my bamboo eating board, procure a matching wine from my digitized aluminum cellar, and sit outside to indulge in silence. Here, there is no uninvited conversation from a lonely bar mate, no obligatory small talk with the annoyed and busy bartender, no server to sheepishly signal for the bill, and no Spotify playlist to guess the chosen theme artist, nor which employee chose this terrible artist based on their tattoos. No, outside on my balcony there is only silence. I listen to nothing. I notice everything.
The gift of silence's clamor is what it allows to enter, not what it adds. Silence is like a dream state that invites the beautiful absurdity of the human brain by inhibiting the usual filters, or in neuroscience terms, "disinhibition:" inhibiting inhibition, which results in neurologic augmentation. The sounds, the sights, the wonder -- they are always present, just inhibited by the noise of activity, inside and out. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has induced a social dream state that connects us to our intrinsic, yet often inhibited tether to nature and to each other. And in doing so, it has also exposed our vulnerability to nature and to each other. What value would life have without the prospect of death? This is elementary Biologic Economics 101 (a non-extant academic study I still hope to establish). What value does any biologic currency (e.g. "life") have without a social agreement upon what value it contemporaneously doesn't have? SARS-CoV-2 has resolved that value. It has revealed a scale whereby a "1" now seems as loud as what used to be a "10," and a "10" is now as faint as an inaudible "1". Nature has its way of enlightening -- even forcing -- humanity with renewed perspective, but at great cost. Our current pandemic is no different.
The cure to COVID-19 won't be found in literally defeating the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It will be found by embracing the lessons it's offering. We must challenge its roulette of death so that we can rediscover purpose in our modern, noisy world so occupied by avoiding death that it ends up avoiding life. The virus's death threat inspires a new perspective of value -- a new perspective of life. While our response to this pandemic seems messy, disorienting, and hopeless (all of which it is), that's also what's expected in an enemy ambush. There is shock, there is death, there is confusion, and there is no plan. In the words of the great World War Two general, General George S. Patton, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week". Humility from a surprise attack, ironically, is what engenders a successful response and ultimate victory, however clumsy. With smoke still billowing, it's becoming apparent that the global response to COVID-19 will be the most successful mitigation of a pandemic in the history of human civilization. The evidence for this is the intensely flatted curve of new infections and deaths that in all previous era pandemics would have yielded large, uncontrolled curves swelling through the ceiling of the graph -- if there even was a graph. Modern ingenuity, technology, and communication, combined with humility, courage, and a renewed value perspective will defeat our common enemy. Ironically, these are the very lessons being offered to us by the enemy -- if we choose to listen. Indeed, in the silence of COVID-19 found atop my balcony, the reawakening of life clamors to be heard.
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The deafening of this outside silence has sharpened my senses. Perched like a vigilant, albeit well-wined-and-dined bird atop my northwest Portland balcony, I've noticed the breath of breezes nudging aside leaves, the impact of a fallen nut upon concrete from a clumsy wire squirrel (I didn't realize squirrels could be clumsy), and the distant engine whine of a lone plane arguing with no one for a landing at PDX airport. I wonder if the air traffic controller told the pilots to pick any runway they want. I wonder who's even on that plane, or perhaps it's just students practicing taking off and landing with empty jets. I notice the pastels of the lengthening sunsets we've (somehow suddenly) transitioned towards in approach to the summer solstice. I look down and imagine pedestrians' visual tracers as they dodge each other like repellant magnets. An exposed image of this peculiar behavior would look like an algebraic lesson in hyperbolic mathematics. Even taste is accentuated as I dole takeout sushi across my bamboo eating board, procure a matching wine from my digitized aluminum cellar, and sit outside to indulge in silence. Here, there is no uninvited conversation from a lonely bar mate, no obligatory small talk with the annoyed and busy bartender, no server to sheepishly signal for the bill, and no Spotify playlist to guess the chosen theme artist, nor which employee chose this terrible artist based on their tattoos. No, outside on my balcony there is only silence. I listen to nothing. I notice everything.
The gift of silence's clamor is what it allows to enter, not what it adds. Silence is like a dream state that invites the beautiful absurdity of the human brain by inhibiting the usual filters, or in neuroscience terms, "disinhibition:" inhibiting inhibition, which results in neurologic augmentation. The sounds, the sights, the wonder -- they are always present, just inhibited by the noise of activity, inside and out. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has induced a social dream state that connects us to our intrinsic, yet often inhibited tether to nature and to each other. And in doing so, it has also exposed our vulnerability to nature and to each other. What value would life have without the prospect of death? This is elementary Biologic Economics 101 (a non-extant academic study I still hope to establish). What value does any biologic currency (e.g. "life") have without a social agreement upon what value it contemporaneously doesn't have? SARS-CoV-2 has resolved that value. It has revealed a scale whereby a "1" now seems as loud as what used to be a "10," and a "10" is now as faint as an inaudible "1". Nature has its way of enlightening -- even forcing -- humanity with renewed perspective, but at great cost. Our current pandemic is no different.
The cure to COVID-19 won't be found in literally defeating the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It will be found by embracing the lessons it's offering. We must challenge its roulette of death so that we can rediscover purpose in our modern, noisy world so occupied by avoiding death that it ends up avoiding life. The virus's death threat inspires a new perspective of value -- a new perspective of life. While our response to this pandemic seems messy, disorienting, and hopeless (all of which it is), that's also what's expected in an enemy ambush. There is shock, there is death, there is confusion, and there is no plan. In the words of the great World War Two general, General George S. Patton, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week". Humility from a surprise attack, ironically, is what engenders a successful response and ultimate victory, however clumsy. With smoke still billowing, it's becoming apparent that the global response to COVID-19 will be the most successful mitigation of a pandemic in the history of human civilization. The evidence for this is the intensely flatted curve of new infections and deaths that in all previous era pandemics would have yielded large, uncontrolled curves swelling through the ceiling of the graph -- if there even was a graph. Modern ingenuity, technology, and communication, combined with humility, courage, and a renewed value perspective will defeat our common enemy. Ironically, these are the very lessons being offered to us by the enemy -- if we choose to listen. Indeed, in the silence of COVID-19 found atop my balcony, the reawakening of life clamors to be heard.
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