All language subtitles for In.Pursuit.of.Silence.2015.DOCU.1080p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H264-FGT

I was
lucky to live in a house

when I was
growing up as a child

that was located in
quite a silent location.

There was also a good view
out of my bedroom window.

And I guess, as a young child,
I fell in love with it.

But I didn't know
what that meant at all.

I didn't even know
what it was, to be honest.

So, how do you talk coherently
about silence?

You could talk
about silence...

Does it exist in
a decibel sense?

A noise sense,
or a lack of noise sense?

And the literature is clear

that silence doesn't
exist in that sense.

The etymological roots
of the word for silence

are somewhat contested.

There are two
words in particular
that people go back to.

There's the gothic term
Ana-silan, and then desinere.

One of them has to do with
the wind dying down

and the other has to do with
a kind of stopping of motion.

They're both to do
with an interruption,
not just of sound,

but the roots of
silence are also to do

with the interruption
of our own...

The imposition of our
own egos on the world.

Almost all of
the early theologians

talk about the ultimate
worship of god is silence.

And that god dwells in
the silence of eternity.

The history of monastic life
is as old as the history
of the human race.

I think the whole
history of shamans

is a history of
a kind of proto-monasticism

where someone in the tribe
has clearly, evidently,

a facility with silence

and a facility
with understanding

the unspoken
processes of the world.

Retreating from
the cacophony of the world

is stepping towards
everything that's essential.

It's about stepping
towards the world

and really about learning
how to love the world again.

Historically,
solitude has always

had an exalted place
in our culture

and it's really only recently
that it has fallen from grace

and now needs to be restored
to its rightful place.

You look at all
the religious traditions,

Buddha, Jesus
and Mohammed, Moses,

these were all seekers
who would go off
into the woods,

think their thoughts,
have their revelations,

and then come back

and share those revelations
with the wider world.

We lose a lot when we
don't allow people...

Not just allow,
but encourage people

to go off by themselves.

You know, whether
literally into the woods,
or metaphorically,

to just go and
chart your own journey
and do it by yourself.

There are certain
paths in this life
that you've got to walk alone

and that's the only way
to do them.

Through zen, you need to feel
the silence with your body,

experience it every day,

and then it becomes
part of you.

That is what
practicing zen is about.

That is the life with zen.

You honestly

and genuinely

live everyday life

through silence.

It's not like you are just
being silent and do nothing.

Would you tell our panel,
please, what your name is
and where you're from?

My name is John cage.
I'm from stony point,
New York.

He is probably
the most controversial figure
in the musical world today

and when you hear
his performance,
if you'll forgive me,

you will understand why.

The instruments
that he will use

include a water pitcher,
an iron pipe,

a goose call, a bathtub,

five radios all hooked up
and a grand piano.

Between 1950 and 1952,

when cage created his
most important piece of music,

cage had
a series of revelations.

And the revelations informed
the rest of his life

and they informed
the rest of his music, too.

He'd been interested in
silence for a long time

and he had been
appreciating noise
for a long time.

So, he had this dualism
about silence versus noise.

So, he was looking for silence
as an alternative to noise.

When he ventured into
an anechoic chamber in Boston,

he was looking for
the quietest place on earth,

because ramakrishna had said,
"find the silence
and you will find god."

And I heard,
in that room, two sounds.

One was high and one was low.

And I thought
there was something
wrong with the room.

I went outside
and found
the engineer in charge

and he said the high one
was your nervous system
in operation

and the low one was
your blood circulating.

He realizes that
silence is an abstraction,

it's a human concept,

and what's actually
happening is that

cage and his own body
and his own being

are completely
interconnected with

all beings and all bodies
of beings, everywhere,

and that everyone
shares the same ground.

Then it became clear that...

That the function of art

is not to communicate one's
personal ideas or feelings,

but rather to imitate nature
in her manner of operation.

Cage's most
important piece of music is,

as many people know,

actually not music at all.

It's four and a half
minutes of silence.

When cage first
performed that piece

with David tudor
as his pianist,

he performed it
in Woodstock, New York,

at a little barn called
Maverick concert house,

and the audience went berserk.

This is 1952. August 29, 1952.

They were incensed.

They were in an uproar
over the performance.

And afterwards,
John opened
the floor to questions.

One of the artists
got up and said,

"good people of Woodstock,

"i think we should
run these people out of town."

That was the reaction.

Silence is where we hear

something deeper
than our chatter.

And silence is where we speak
something deeper
than our words.

All of us know that
the most essential things
in life

are exactly what
we can't express.

Our relation to faith,
our relation to love,

our relation to death,
our relation to divinity.

So, I think silence
is the resting place
of everything essential.

For the first,
I don't know how many,

hundred thousand years
of human life,

when we were out
on the Savanna,
learning about the forest,

silence was essential
to our survival.

So, silence is
our natural milieu,

and the farther we
get away from silence,
the more we lose our humanity.

I want you
to answer the questions!

I want you to
answer the questions!

- Was there...
- Do I believe...

I'm giving you
an opportunity here.
This is how to ask it.

This is how you need...
I'm giving you an opportunity.

This how you
need to ask...

I'm doing the interview
here, Dana.

But you weren't there...

I don't need to
have been there!

American individualism
now has become

more and more associated with

our right and our
almost social obligation

to impose our will
on the world,

to get out our thoughts,
to not hesitate,
to not be shy.

In race after race,
bottom line...

In race after race...

Third card trick...

In race after race,
democrats are...
In any case...

When it comes to women.

Winning over
women in Colorado...

There is such an intense,
overwhelming drive

to contribute our
little ricocheting response

to this soul-crushing
din of the moment.

...- over me.
- You're not...

One of
the specific plans...

Dana, you're not
gonna filibuster.

I'm not going
to let you do it.
Ed, ed, ed!

Let me answer your question
you asked me earlier.

I'm gonna go back
to this question.

Throughout Japanese history,

there has been
an appreciation of softer,
quieter registers of being.

One of the most
signal instances of this

is really in relationship
to the tea ceremony.

One of the most
important masters,
sen rikyu,

lived at a time of
incredible martial activity

among different
samurai groups.

And part of his interest
in developing
the tea ceremony,

in the ways that he did,

was to cultivate
an appreciation for silence

and silence's relationship
to a more pacific environment
in general.

When guests entered
the tea room, they would
remove their katana swords.

All of the participants leave
behind their social status,
distinctions,

and other such concerns
when they enter the tea room.

The participants concentrate
on the moment,

finding awareness
of how each of them

is contributing to this
singular, living experience.

That is what's being
experienced amidst the
silence of the tea ceremony.

As a result,

there are no selfish desires
or thoughts of personal gain,

only the peaceful world
inside the tea room.

Silence allows everybody
to have equal platform
and equal voice

because if nobody is talking,
nobody is dominating.

Silence is a sound,

and I think it's
a sound with many qualities.

And I think if we
start to cultivate
an appreciation of silence

as the precious thing it is,

and enjoy it for
a few minutes a day,

then it gives us
a proper relationship
with sound,

with noise,
with our own sound.

It allows us to be
much more balanced

in the way that we
relate to the world,
much more conscious.

When we throw
around the term of silence,

we may, in the first instance,

imagine that we're seeking
some kind of absolute quiet,

but very, very few people
look for that.

What we're looking,
I came to believe,

is really more for
a kind of balance
in our environment.

It's the particular
balance of sound and quiet

that maximizes our
perceptual awareness
of where we are.

Sounds a little bit like

one of those toys you see,
and you shake it,

and it's like a little...

Kind of like that sort of a...

Kind of one of those...

Well, probably should
leave him be, I suppose.

The first superintendent
of this park, Harry karstens,

he was very aware
of the solitude and
quietude of this place.

And he had
an interesting quote in 1924,

when he said,

"there is much to learn
by those who understand

"the language of
the great silent places."

Oftentimes,
I make measurements

that can be as low
as 13, 14 decibels
in the wintertime.

And in the summertime,
might be in
the 20-25 decibel range.

As the background
level decreases,
your listening area increases.

In a really still environment,
you've got this situation

where you're very large,
acoustically.

You can detect
these very minute sounds
from far away

and it gives you
this incredible
sense of space,

this openness.

So, you know,
we exist in the world,

and to be able to
explore that world

with an unbroken attention,

I think that's
one of the things
that both silence,

and an intact soundscape,

protects that
sort of exploration.

I guess I got hooked on birds
when I was about eight.

I heard the sound of a bird
bathing in a woods pool

behind my house in Virginia,

and I did sort
of a jungle crawl
under all this catbrier

and I came out onto this
little blue-winged warbler

bathing in a forest pool,

and it was the most
beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

I really like
being in quiet places

because I use my ears
for everything.

Primitive man,
if you didn't pay attention

to every little
thing around you,

you were going to be
in trouble really fast,

or you weren't going
to find anything to eat.

And I think, for me,
it's a question of

keeping in touch with
those primal instincts

and just always being ready
for whatever comes your way.

I call what I do
the art of disappearing.

It's a situational awareness,
it's a richness of being,

it's a tapping into

this great show that's
going on all around you.

There's that herring.

These very quiet environments
offer tremendous opportunities
for listening,

but they're also
the most fragile
resources we have.

Certainly,
the physical beings we are,

we're built to function
in these places

and to hear
those distant sounds.

If we really lose touch
with our senses,

with our capacity
for deep listening,

I think we'll lose
a large piece of who we are,

certainly of the animals
we once were.

It's just like our muscles,

and if it happens over time,
across generations,

it may not be easily reversed.

To lose our connection
with the world
through our senses,

I think would be
a terrible loss,
and everyone knows this.

I mean, the prospect
of being blinded or deafened

I think would be terrifying
to most people.

But in fact,
it may be happening

in a much more
subtle way already.

We humans lived in nature
for seven million years.

Following the industrial
revolution modernization began

which led to urbanization.

Big cities like shibuya
started to appear,

and at the same time, started
to create overwhelming noise.

Evolution even causes
our genes to change.

But this change doesn't occur
in just hundreds of years.

It's believed to take
10,000 to 30,000 years
for this to happen.

In other words,
we're still carrying the genes

which allow us to adapt to
nature while we are living in
this artificial modern world.

I believe that humans
originally, from a genetic
point of view prefer silence.

We prefer this,
the silence of nature.

Historically the forest
has been understood

simply as a "nice and
relaxing place to go"
based on our experience.

However, it's more than that.
It's preventive medicine.

The forest's healing effect
comes with the ability
to prevent illness.

It's not that
it will cure the illness,

but it will reduce stress and
strengthen the immune system,

preventing people
from getting sick.

What is central
to this whole
situation we live in

is silence.

And that the sounds
that we notice

are merely bubbles
on the surface of
silence that burst.

Silence doesn't really exist.
Silence is sounds.

If I stop talking,
for instance,

now we hear
the sounds of sixth Avenue.

Sound is affecting
our brain waves,
our heart rate, our breathing,

our hormone secretions.
All of our physical rhythms

are being affected
by sound outside us
all the time.

A sudden noise, for example...

So, anybody watching that

probably had
a little shot of cortisol,
fight/flight hormone.

And that happens to
us a lot in cities.

On the other hand,
if you imagine surf,

that would calm you down,
in fact even send you
to sleep.

Many people will
go to sleep to surf.

So, physiologically
sound affects us,
that's the first way.

Second is psychologically.

It changes our mood,
our feelings.
Music does that.

So do other things,
like birdsong.

The third way
that sound affects us
is cognitively.

So, you can't understand
two people talking
at the same time.

We've got a huge
storage space in our brain,

but the auditory input channel
is quite limited
in its bandwidth.

Roughly 1.6
human conversations.

Of course,
we have no ear-lids.

And therefore if
we're in an office

and we hear somebody talking

and they're taking
up one of our 1.6,

it doesn't leave us
with much bandwidth

to listen to
our internal voice

where we're trying
to write something
or calculate something.

And the final way
sound affects us
is behaviorally.

We'll move away
from unpleasant sound.

We'll move, if we can,
towards pleasant sound.

Here in London,
they have about
140 tube stations

with classical music
playing in them now

because the research has shown
that classical music
reduces vandalism.

If you put pounding music on
and you're driving,

then suddenly
you'll drive faster.

That kind of behavioral change
happens to us all the time.

Sound is a physical
phenomenon, right?

And when the sound
hits the ear,

the ear physiologically
picks up the sound

brings it to the brain
and the sound is identified.

Mama!

When does it become noise?
That's a different part
of the brain.

That's the part of
the brain that says,

you know,
this particular sound

is intruding on
what I'm trying to do.

This is unwanted,
unpleasant sound.

It is official,
arrowhead stadium is again

the loudest outdoor stadium
in the world.

Fans reached 142.2 decibels,

beating
the Seattle seahawks fans

who previously
had that record.

To put this amount of noise
in perspective for you,

it is more than a jet engine

and far more than the human
pain tolerance of the ear,

which is why
the chiefs passed out
about 36,000 earplugs,

but that's only enough
for half of all these people

that were inside tonight.

I came to feel that

one way of articulating
the presence of noise

is to think about sound
that gets inside of you,

and for the time it's there,
dominates all of your
perceptual apparatus.

It might be bad,
or it might be good,

you might be in
the mood for it or not,

but it's consuming you,

it's taking over
your heartbeat

or at least taking over
your attention.

Almost everybody knows
that education is very,
very, very important.

But with the train passing by
every, like, two minutes,

you can't hear some things

that could be very,
very important to know
when you grow older.

That's right.
Okay, so she said...

For schools,

the internal maximum
that the city recommends
is 35 decibels.

It's routinely over 85,
with the windows closed!

When the windows are open,
it's routinely in the 90s,

and this school doesn't have
any air conditioning,

so in August and September
and may and June,

those windows have to be open
or it's unbearable
in the classrooms.

When people
make decisions in noise,

and this has been shown
again and again,

their decisions are reactive.

Noise is a huge issue
because it constantly

envelops everything we do.
It surrounds us.

There's technical elements,
devices,

pumps, alarms,
physical environment,

in combination with humans
that make mistakes.

We see very clearly anxiety,

delays in decision making,

errors in
receiving information,

errors in
transmitting information,

errors in calculations
of medication dosages,

and a whole series
of other downstream problems

because of confusion
caused by the overall
external noise.

Mumbai is
the loudest city in the world

according to
an official statement

of the central pollution
control board.

We have a whole range
of festivals in India.

We call them traditional,
but traditionally
we didn't have loudspeakers.

I could say it
in terms of decibel levels,

but I think I should just say
that if you were to stand

right next to a jet engine
for a long period of time,

that's what your house
would be like

for at least three months
during the festival season.

And people can't bear it.
People in hospital,

there have been
instances of people

who have died
due to heart attacks.

The supreme court of India
first took notice of noise

when a 10-year-old girl
was raped during a festival

and her screams
couldn't be heard
because of the noise.

If you look at
what's happening today,

I think we're in a kind of
frenzied echo chamber.

Visually, it's busier.

Acoustically it's
busier and louder.

You just
want to go buy a sweater

and you're bombarded
with loud music.

There are decibel ratings
in New York restaurants
of 90 now.

You're screaming at somebody
from a foot away to be heard.

Technically, in those
New York restaurants,

all the waiters
should be going around
with hearing protectors on.

Obviously,
when you move to New York,

you're moving to a loud city.

It's the biggest,
most vibrant city
in the country.

It's famously loud,
it famously never sleeps.

But what has seemed to happen
over the years,

what has changed is
noise has become
more ubiquitous,

and we seem to be
almost desensitized to it.

Do you want me to
ask the neighbors...
Is that sound...

Yeah,
is that the thumping?

Why should we
always be stimulated,
or more and more stimulated,

so it'll reach
a fever pitch...

Then what happens?
Where do you go next?

There is
a tinier and tinier space
for reflective thought.

The planes start
at 6:03 in the morning.

They usually stop at midnight,

but sometimes
they go to 2:00 or 3:00
in the morning.

I did not sign up
for this kind of noise.

Nobody did.

They are making
these precision lanes
in the sky.

Right now that Lane
is over my house.

Five years from now
it's going to be
over your house

because those lanes
are going to be multiplied

by 10 fold,
20 fold, 50 fold.

Recent research
is building on the foundation

of really now almost
50 years of research

that suggested
that there are

more serious health effects
related to noise.

Hypertension of
high blood pressure,

and even more recently

there is a very
convincing effect

of particularly
transport noise,

road traffic noise,
on the risk of
cardiovascular disease,

of heart attacks,
myocardial infarction,
and even death from noise.

Noise kills. And that's right,
this is what we have shown,

that noise causes
heart disease.

People don't die
from one day to another

because they visit
a noisy area.

If the noise stress
becomes chronic,

if it's persistent
over many years,

all of a sudden
you may have a heart attack,

due to the chronic stress.

You don't get used to it.
You cope with it.

Something in your brain
is having to go,

"I'm not listening to that.
I'm still not listening
to that.

"I'm definitely not
listening to that."

And it takes effort.

Somewhere there's
mental effort going on
to screen it out.

That's 102 decibels going out.

I guess

the question that is on
everyone's mind is
why I'm doing this.

I could say that it's,
you know,

merely a response to
something like a culture

that's more concerned about
material things and leisure

and less with
reflection and introspection.

I could say that
it has something to do

with some inner turmoil
of my own,

that it's me trying
to figure out my life.

Honestly, nothing quite
seems to do it for me.

I'm not really sure why
i feel I need to do it.

I have this feeling that
it has a lot of potential

to be something
really meaningful for me,

and hopefully
for other people.

Silence returns us
to what is real.

This is how I see it.

Silence is a journey
into the wilderness
and into the dark.

You can't be sure
what you're going
to encounter there,

and I think many people
are rightly wary of silence

because we use noise
as a distraction
and an evasion.

Silence is a journey
right into the heart
of your being.

If you allow
silence to circulate,
particularly among people,

what you're going
to discover is that

your mind becomes aware
of what the truth is.

And sometimes truth is
not that sugar-coated.

Sometimes you have
to face the truth

that things are
not going the way
that you might want

and that you're
losing or you're failing,

or they are.

You might feel out of control
because when
silence circulates,

it makes you aware that
you're not that in control
of anything, really.

So it puts people
against a wall and says,

"this is you and you're human
and you're existing right now

"and this is your reality.
Do you like it?"

And often people say "no."

I guess that
I would argue in defense

of pursuing
the experience regardless.

That we have such a deficit
of that kind of encounter
in our lives right now.

We have so little
that is opening out
onto something larger.

We tend to
have substituted

human experience with
technological experience.

We think all this noise
and artifice is human,

but it's not.

It takes us away
from what is human.

There's nothing wrong with it,

but we tend to live
via our ingenuity

instead of
being our own truth.

So much
in the ways that we exist,

particularly our forms
of digital connectivity,

take us out of ourselves
all the time, all the time.

And that's a different
kind of desert,

and ultimately to me,
it's a much more
frightening desert.

Because that's a desert
in which our individual self

is just obliterated in
a circuit of constant

very, very
surface-level communication
with others.

The information revolution
came without a manual,

and I think
we are all noticing

that machines can give us
pretty much everything

except a sense of how to make
discerning use of machines,

and that at some level,
we have to go offline
to collect ourselves

to begin to know
how to navigate
the ever more complicated

and accelerating online world.

In the 21st century,

I think the need for silence
is more urgent
than it's ever been.

There tends to be
a big technological
discussion about computers

and whether they're
good or they're bad,

and I think that's sort
of a silly discussion.

But there should
be a discussion

about how much time
you spend

in the real world
and how much time
you withdraw.

And I think that's going to be
a very significant predictor

of the earlier onset
of dementia

and other declines in aging
than has ever happened before.

As we say...

Modern people don't feel moved
or impressed just by living.

In order to do so,

we need to keep the silence
and examine ourselves.

We have less silence,

and by that I mean
that the fabric of noise

is more constant
and pervasive.

This shift to
a constant envelopment

within a band of noise
that's too much,

I think is what's
really driving us crazy.

We just build
these cities Willy-nilly.
Tire noise,

diesel sound,
that kind of stuff
is all around us all the time.

Architecture to
a large degree is about
the visual impact of things.

So, it's about the visual
impact of the facade.

It's about the visual impact
of the big public spaces.

It's really not about
the user's experience.

It's really not
about perceptual comfort.

It's really not about
the user preference.

You know, in the uk
architects train
for five years

and they spend
one day on sound
in five years.

It's no wonder
they're entirely ocular.

You ask an architect
what he's working on,
he'll show you a picture.

People speak at somewhere
between 55 and 65
decibels usually,

and often the heating
and cooling system

in the building
is louder than that.

This is absolutely
not an argument for
everywhere being quiet

or everywhere being the same

or that there's some sort of
panacea magic soundscape

or that we want to
manipulate citizens

into a nineteen
eighty-four zombie state
or anything like that.

If we all start taking
on designing with sound,

we will have a huge profusion
of amazing sound to enjoy.

Just like we have
a huge profusion
of furniture to enjoy.

And just in the same way,

I think we'll have a million
different soundscapes

that you'll be able to buy
or download or stream.

Quiet mark
is the new award program

from the uk's
noise abatement society

that awards the quietest,
high-performance,
low-noise technology

across over 35 categories
of product design,

and also solutions
to unwanted noise.

Everything from
home appliances,
airplanes, cars,

to the way we build houses
with the materials.

I think ultimately consumers
want more peace and quiet.

And we've reached
a point where

we have got so many
extraordinary layers

of technology
around us helping us,
like a technology golden age,

but the noise of
those machines have become

almost too much for us
to really cope with,

or we don't really know
what we're coping with.

A lot of items
are made these days

without an awareness
of their volume.

You put them all together,
it's a cacophony,
it's not a symphony.

We made this car
the smallest
mobile anechoic chamber.

We put a lot of effort

in modifying the materials
which are used in the car

to get a very
quiet and relaxing
atmosphere in the car.

It's not only the design
outside the appliances,

it's not only
the user interface,

it's the whole package,

and sound is very,
very important these days
for the whole package.

It's not only
the decibels we measure,

but it's also the quality
of the sound we measure.

We are hoping
that we can reduce
our noise impact,

through our aircraft,

for the people in
our neighborhoods
by 75% by 2020.

Silence is
available to everyone
and it is never too late

to seek silence.

It isn't true that it's
a rich man's plaything.

If you really want to learn
the worth of silence,

then you will use
your ingenuity to find

a place and a time
for that silence.

All of us have changed

in the time since 4'33"
was first made
in the early '50s.

We have less...

We have less confidence.

Now in time,
as it goes into the future,

we wonder, for instance,

how long the future will be.

We don't take for granted
that it will be forever.

We wonder whether we've...

You might say, we wonder
whether we have
ruined the silence.

4'33" has
been performed

all over the world in all
kinds of circumstances.

Some of them very casual,
some of them,

like carnegie hall,
very formal.

But people now
respect this piece.

People sit very quietly
for it.

It's as though without knowing
anything about cage's history

and why he came to
this realization,

it's as though people

get a piece of that
realization themselves.

"Oh, yeah, four minutes
and 33 seconds of meditation

"in which everyone
is silent together."

It's the most
extraordinary thing,

to be in a place where
it's being performed.

What you feel is
the entire audience

just listening to absolutely
everything that happens.

You just sense this
breathing organism

of people and this place,
sharing this moment.

Well, that's one of the most
extraordinary performances

I've ever experienced here
in the barbican hall.

4'33" by John cage.

If we could all learn
the work of silence,

we'd take
an awful lot of pressure
off of our planet.

There wouldn't be
this constant seeking,

seeking,
seeking for something else

to fill up that empty space,

when what will fill up
the empty space

is actually going
into the empty space.

We do need to adjust
to our environment.

We also need to learn
to be able to be silent

and to draw on
the wellspring of silence

when the environment
isn't conducive to silence.

In a world of movement,
stillness has become
a great luxury,

and in a world of distraction,
it's attention that
we're hungering for.

And in a world of noise,

silence calls us like

a beautiful piece of music
on the far side of
the mountains.

It's not some
kind of exoticism,

esoteric practices
in a coded language.

It's as simple as
shifting your attention

from the things that
cause noise in your life

to the vast
interior spaciousness

which is our natural silence.

It's this
process of ungrasping,

it's the process of
opening your hand,

it's the process of
unclenching a fist.