Music and Silence

I've been thinking a lot lately about distraction, probably because I am a sucker for entertainment, especially if it involves real people or tv spies, or both. I recently came across this insight from a professor of mine at BU: “Adolescents are not merely reacting to the culture, they are directly influencing its shape with their desperate feelings and worship of fashion. They are in a state of distraction, for the moment alienated from the genuine activities ‘intended’ for the human mind, which include a search for and examination of human realities, which, in great measure, means the ongoing construction of the self” (Cottle, 21). When we give in to the distractions so readily available to us, we forfeit the development of self.

In addition, I recently reread Fahrenheit 451, and can't shake the image of the protagonist's wife sitting in a room with three walls of tv, prattling away to the screens and to her equally shallow friends about simulacrums that are more attractive than real life. This disturbing image sadly resonates with me because I find a piece of myself relating to and perhaps even mimicking this character. It can be fun to analyze a plot twist in a work of fiction, or a particular event on a reality tv show. In a way, popular media provides common fodder for conversation among people that otherwise have little in common. Yet, just as reading Sparknotes isn't the same as reading Hamlet, so too is watching a character develop on screen not even close to experiencing personal development, no matter how small, though in the moment it may feel that way.

Is it not ironic that in a society so richly saturated with luxury, with every conceivable convenience, with air conditioning and heating, clean water and free libraries, we drown in the inundation of distraction and forget to enjoy the resources given us? Why do we do this? Why do I do this?

The Screwtape Letters describes heaven as a region where "all that is not music is silence" (119). That is the tone of my grandparents' generation--they had music, they had silence. They knew how to live deeply, and not replace their life experiences for the cheap imitations on the screen. They had concerns I will never fully understand. If anyone has deserved a day off, an inexpensive way to escape from the problems of the present through distraction, it was they. Yet they did not, and now they sit on the self-made mountain of abundant memories, and they are happy. So today I commit to being more like my grandparents. I commit to following Polonius' advice, to "thine own self be true" by peeling away the counterfeit influences to my self, and discovering my self through music and silence. I commit to finding heaven.