By The Landlord
“I was quiet, but I was not blind.” – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
“My love is a hummingbird sitting that quiet moment on the bough, as the same cat crouches.” – Charles Bukowski
“The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.” – Billy Joel
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Quiet is not silent. It might be hushed, discreet, low-key, only barely discernible, like the soft crunch of feet in a snowy forest in Finland, muffled by the wood and the whiteness, with just the faintest breeze creaking in the branches. Or whispered voices in the distance, or the sound of a cat faintly snoring when it sleeps, the gentle flick of a page turning, the tinkle of a teacup, the low hum of electricity, a fridge, or an air conditioner, the sound of crickets or other insects, random sighs of people, or cows, or chairs creaking, or throats clearing in a concentrated library or classroom. Or indeed, quite topically, it could be the surreal absence of noise in a Covid-19 lockdown world, of urban slow-motion, gentle apocalypse, and only occasional traffic, where the skies are empty, the stars shine out, and where, like last night, when a plane went over for the first time in weeks, I almost rushed outside to stare and point and shake a stick at it, as if I were a disturbed Amazonian tribesman. And in this transformed landscape, perhaps the birds and the animals are beginning to wonder if the industrial age never happened, as if the clock has gone back 200 years.
Quiet is not silent. That is a relief. Silence can be deafening, and a little bit frightening. I'm getting to very much enjoy the new quiet, despite the cause of it, and after all of this is over, will we we ever want to give it up? Instead of wearing masks, might we all go around in slippers, shushing the traffic? Is the new quiet heightening our senses, and making us appreciate the natural world even more? Could it be the saviour of the environment? Is it allowing us, as George Eliot put it in Middlemarch, to regain a "keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life … like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, where we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
Man with bag on Westminster Bridge
This week's song topic then is not quiet in terms of volume or style – that would a bit like asking for loud songs in reverse. It is a purely lyrical topic, and hopefully will gather all kinds of quiet, whether as noun or verb or imperative. And of course, just to confirm, quiet is not silence, which is the absence of sound. Of course there are overlaps, and that’s a topic we've covered before. So here are some previously chosen songs for your reference:
Quiet doesn’t always mean being still. It can indicate activity, and positivity, the sound of concentration. It can indicate slow change beneath the surface. Quiet revolutions. But can it also be too quiet? Can telling people to be quiet also be an act of repression. Tranquillity, calm and serenity, or concentration, slow stirring and change? There are all kinds of quiet out there and this week it’s time to explore these and their associations, as described literally or metaphorically in song lyrics.
Tip-toeing into the Bar this week we have more guests here to whisper more about quiet. Who are the quiet ones in bands. It’s never the singer, that’s for sure, nor the fidgety drummer. It might be the rhythm guitarist, rather than the lead, but most often it’s the bass player for some reason, even though their instrument most thrumming and loudly heard from a distance. Bass players are usually the steady introverts of the band.
Yet often it’s the loudest of musicians who claim to be quiet in private. “If you were to look back at me as a school kid you'd see a very quiet little church mouse kind of character,” says the sneering Sex Pistols’ John Lydon.
“Yeah. I was pretty quiet as a child,” says Metallica’s James Hetfield.
“Fuck off!” replies the quiet, shy retiring John Lydon.
“Guess what? I live a quiet daytime life. I walk everywhere. I lie down. I wash socks. I fry an egg,” says Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns. But what about the evenings?
The endless TV chatterbox and member of The Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am, confesses however that he can’t ever be quiet. “I can't be quiet, as that's when I notice the ringing in my ears.”
Meanwhile another big talker, and the first female Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, is here to confess. “I am a quiet person's nightmare. The only time I shut up is when I'm reading, because I'm a book geek.”
But some performers are genuinely quiet, especially in their private lives. Kate Bush has even turned up briefly to tell us, very modestly, “I am just a quiet reclusive person who has managed to hang around for a while.”
Kurt Vile has also popped into add about the the necessity of quiet for working. “I’ve developed this routine at home. I wait for the kids to go to bed; then my wife falls asleep. Then, it's dark and quiet enough for me to work on songs.”
And here’s Stevie Wonder, whose inner visions and sense of hearing must be very acute indeed. “I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.”
Now here’s Ray Charles: “I don't know about other writers, but for myself, to write I must be relatively quiet - it's very difficult to write with the telephone and the doorbell ringing and conversation going on; I'm not that good a writer to write through all that!”
Grace Jones is not a quiet person, you might think. But her background was, not something you’d associate, perhaps, with Jamaica. “Growing up in Jamaica, the Pentecostal church wasn't that fiery thing you might think. It was very British, very proper. Hymns. No dancing. Very quiet. Very fundamental."
Quiet can bring creativity. But in the case of Kesha, she actually enjoys quiet in the drone of an aeroplane journey. “I try to get in quiet time and book time, but really, the only time I ever get that is when I'm on an airplane - I have a fear of flying, but I actually love flying because it's the only time I can sleep, and it's the only time I get to read.”
The serenity of Highgate Cemetery
Now, in another corner we have other distinguished guests from the world of philosopher, poetry and other writing, extolling the virtues of quietness. “The good and the wise lead quiet lives,” announces Euripides. And “in quiet places, reason abounds,” chips in Adlai Stevenson I.
“With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things,” says William Wordsworth, eyeing up the daffodils dancing quietly in our beer garden.
And with a view to nature: “Cows are amongst the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them; and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures,” remarks Thomas de Quincey.
Quiet then is surely good for your health. Jonathan Swift things so, at least in part. “The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
Love can also prosper in an atmosphere of quiet subtleties and signals, according the Laurence Sterne. “Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.”
“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown,” adds Robert Greene.
But is quiet always good. Blazing Saddles director Mel Brooks says it isn’t. “If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colourful and lively!”
Still waters run deep
But quiet can have other more serious associations. Quiet, as a order, a command can be a tool for control. Despite his comment earlier, Napoleon is back confessing that religion may be a source of peace to some, but it also has a political dimension. “Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”
Beneath quiet, things can also be stirring. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation,” says Henry David Thoreau.
And here’s Noam Chomsky, suggesting that the elite in power certainly want us to remain quiet, watching TV, the internet, working and sleeping. “The doctrine that everything is fine as long as the population is quiet, that applies in the Middle East, applies in Central America, it applies in the United States.
Finally, let’s enjoy different, inspirational forms of quietness in the genre of film. In the remarkable Inuit film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, while the plot is a tale of revenge and murder, and a man running naked across the landscape to flee murderous rivals, many scenes capture the extraordinary quiet and the soft crunch of this remote life.
Far more dramatic, is the heart-stopping quiet scene in Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, where Agent Starling fumbles in the dark to track down the psychopathic killer in his basement. All you can hear is here panting fear as the killer approaches in his night vision kit.
And finally, Stanley Kubrick, a director who used quietness perhaps more effectively than anyone. Barry Lyndon (1975) is an extraordinarily painterly portrayal of life in 18th-century England, with long still shots of the bucolic landscape that between the hero’s moments of gradual rise and fall, show the slow pace of life. But perhaps the most telling quiet is still that scene of Hal the computer talking to Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is pretty chilling when Hal speaks, but when it all goes quiet, that’s when you really understand the meaning of space.
So then, it’s time to gently place your songs about quiet in comments below. I’m delighted to say that this week’s supervisor of serenity and harbinger of hush is returning guest guru DiscoMonster. Deadline for comments is 11pm UK time on Sunday, with playlists published on Wednesday. But there’ll be no shushing in this library.
Embrace the absurd. New York in lockdown
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