InQueensland: Silence is golden
In today’s Summer Reading book extract, Brisbane writer (and InQueensland columnist) Christine Jackman, in a quest to rediscover quiet and silence in a noise-filled world, went on two silent retreats. She gives an insight into why:
‘Quiet please . . .’ The electronic message flashed up on the fence encircling the Gabba’s cricket field like a digital bracelet, a string of advertising gems glinting as they beckoned for our attention. The punchline followed: ‘Just joking!’
No kidding. There was no escaping the din as we joined more than 26,000 other cricket fans for a Big Bash League match between struggling locals the Brisbane Heat and the dominant Sydney Thunder in mid-January 2019, a few weeks after Peter and I got home.
Between deliveries, the stadium erupted with thumping pop music, coordinated clapping, stamping and chants. There were familiar audience participation activities too: members of the crowd were encouraged to kiss their partners, or hoist their youngest child in the air to the music of The Lion King, or demonstrate the latest dance craze—in our case the maddening ‘Baby Shark’. All for the roaming cameras. And all accompanied by more blaring beats.
Of course, social media was an integral part of the experience. There were free tickets to win, and even admission to the coveted ‘pool deck’—where body-confident fans could enjoy a premium viewing position from a swimming pool built on the boundary, provided they posted pictures with the requisite hashtags to Instagram and Twitter.
And in case anyone was still missing the point, frequent announcements ordered spectators to ‘make some noise!’, with an artificial meter on the electronic scoreboard purporting to measure the commotion.
I didn’t need the Gabba’s pretend device. By then I had become so obsessed with noise and sound that I had downloaded a portable decibel meter app, recommended by audiologists, onto my phone. When the crowd erupted, the meter often climbed to about 90 decibels, the threshold beyond which prolonged exposure (eight hours or more) is likely to cause permanent damage.
Read the full extract from my book Turning Down the Noise here.