In Pursuit of Silence (45 page)

a Deaf graduate student
:
Robert Sirvage, interview by author, winter 2009. Sirvage shared with me extremely important insights into the Deaf experience both at Gallaudet and during a conference we attended at MIT.

“maluma” and “takete”
:
V. S. Ramachandran and E. M. Hubbard, “Synaesthesia—A Window into Perception, Thought and Language,”
Journal of Consciousness Studies
8, 12 (2001): 3–34.

with the Dalai Lama
:
Dalai Lama, interview by Werner Herzog,
Wheel of Time
(Werner Herzog FilmProduktion, 2003).

group called PDM
:
Alex Cequea, “How to Conduct Your Own Public Meditations,” Publication Meditation Project,
http://alexcequea.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/Public_Meditation_Project_How-to.pdf
.

“the ambient soul”
:
Louis Kahn, “Silence and Light II,” 236.

“It may metaphorically”
:
Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
(New York: New American Library, 1958), 80.

Darwin makes the silent
:
Adam Phillips,
Darwin’s Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories
(New York: Basic Books, 2000).

“a most paradoxical mixture”
:
Charles Darwin,
The Voyage of the Beagle
(New York: Modern Library, 2001), 12.

“silenced every one”
:
Charles Darwin,
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin: Including an Autobiographical Chapter, volume 1
, Francis Darwin, ed. (London: John Murray, 1887), 77.

“The agriculturist in ploughing”
:
Charles Darwin, “On the Formation of Mould,”
Proceedings of the Geological Society of London
2 (1838): 576.

where I met a friend
:
Natalie deSouza, interview by author, summer 2009. DeSouza did more to give me a grounding in a spectrum of scientific disciplines than I can say, along with providing me with many references that were vital to my research.

she would be
years
: Claire Benard, interview by author, summer 2009. In addition to the assistance provided me on that summer afternoon, Benard graciously invited me back to the lab on another occasion in the midst of a move to her own lab in Massachusetts. She also answered many of my questions about research at the lab in subsequent e-mail exchanges.

“There is no such thing”
:
John Cage,
Silence
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 8.

trace it back to Nietzsche
:
Lawrence Baron, “Noise and Degeneration: Theodor Lessing’s Crusade for Quiet,”
Journal of Contemporary History
17, 1 (January 1982): 165–78.

“to change human beings”
:
Theodor Lessing, “Jewish Self-Hatred,” in
The Weimar Sourcebook
, Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg, eds. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 271.

Lessing idolized Rice
:
“Germans to War on Street Noises,”
New York Times
, August 9, 1908.

In 1933, Lessing himself
:
“Lessing, German Refugee, Slain in Prague; Attacks on Others Abroad Are Feared,”
New York Times
, August 31, 1933.

“spend all this”
:
Colin Grimwood, interview by author, spring 2009.

High-density development
: Sounder City: The Mayor’s Ambient Noise Strategy
(London: Greater London Authority, 2004), 181–87.

A recent Swedish study
:
Mistra: The Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, “The Right to a Good Soundscape,” February 29, 2008,
www.mistra-research.se/mistra/english/news/news/therighttoagoodsoundscape.5.61632b5e117dec92f47800028054.html
.

In Pompeii, for example
:
Mary Beard,
The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), 62.

the ancient Greek city
: City Noise: The Report of the Commission Appointed by Dr. Shirley W. Wynne, Commission of Health, to Study Noise in New York City and to Develop Means of Abating It
, Edward F. Brown et al., eds. (New York: Department of Health, 1930), 5–6.

friend named Lyman
:
Lyman Casey, interview by author, spring 2009. I’m grateful to Casey for the time he took out from his busy teaching schedule to help deepen my appreciation of the noise situation faced by teachers today. My thanks go out to all the students of Brooklyn Preparatory High School who shared with me their experiences of noise and silence with such candor and grace.

“practice, and a lot of it”
:
Jonathan Edmonds, interview by author, spring 2009.

“Are people getting”
:
Arline Bronzaft, interview by author, spring 2008. I later interviewed Bronzaft at her home and held additional phone interviews with her. She was instrumental in helping me understand the work of antinoise activists at the grassroots level around the country.

perception is differentiation
:
Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
The Visible and the Invisible
, Alphonso Lingis, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 197.

There were many works that helped me formulate the ideas in this book beyond those that contributed to specific passages and are listed in the notes.

I found myself returning in particular to R. Murray Schafer’s remarkable book
The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World
(Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1977), as well as to various works of George Steiner, such as the T. S. Eliot Memorial Lectures of 1970, collected in
In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971), along with his essays in
Language and Silence: Essays on Language. Literature, and the Inhuman
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967). Susan Sontag’s essay “The Aesthetics of Silence,” in
Styles of Radical Will
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1967), was also a valuable source.

When I began shaping my thoughts about the relationship between Theodor Lessing and Julia Barnett Rice, two essays were of great significance: Lawrence Baron, “Noise and Degeneration:
Theodor Lessing’s Crusade for Quiet,
Journal of Contemporary History
17, 1 (January 1982): 165–78; and Karin Bijsterveld, “The Diabolical Symphony of the Mechanical Age: Technology and Symbolism of Sound in European and North American Noise Abatement Campaigns, 1900–40,
Social Studies of Science
31, 1 (February 2001): 37–70. I also benefited from reading Peter Payer, “The Age of Noise: Early Reactions in Vienna, 1870– 1914,”
Journal of Urban History
33, 5 (July 2007): 773–93.

Many books by Thomas Merton were important references, especially
Mystics and Zen Masters
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1961);
The Sign of Jonas
(New York: Harcourt, 1981); and
The Silent Life
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1957).

Other books that contributed to my interpretation of the noise/silence problem and potential solutions include:

Jacques Attali,
Noise: The Political Economy of Music
, Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989)

H-Dirksen L. Bauman, ed.,
Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008)

Peter Burke,
The Art of Conversation
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993)

Derwas J. Chitty,
The Desert a City
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1966)

Harlan Lane,
When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf
(New York: Vintage Books, 1989)

Oliver Sacks,
Seeing Voices
(New York: Vintage Books, 2000)

William C. Stebbins,
The Acoustic Sense of Animals
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983)

Jun’chir? Tanizaki,
In Praise of Shadows
, Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker, trans. (Sedwick, ME: Leete’s Island Books, Inc., 1977)

Emily Thompson,
The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002)

Helen Waddell,
The Desert Fathers
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1957)