“a meditative film about our relationship with silence, sound, and the impact of noise”
you’ve been gagging for this one. A sequestration come violation of sorts has been spreading it’s contagion at ever greater/more offensive volumes of assault & imposition, – noise pollution! particularly the gratuitous kind, generally decked with a triple-coating of obnoxiousness, selfishness & brain-dead insouciance or ignorance. One of the worst ramifications of the tech-fanaticism that continues to swell is that every twat now carries a portable idiot device that can spew sonic-refuse & infect it’s surroundings in a generous glaze of shit. Highly portable & “socially accepted/normalized”, this means that even in refuges of temporary solace, ruination & staunch insult is only a thumb-flick away. Coupled with the horror of the motor car & the nightmare of urban expansion/constant construction (not to mention the airborne odium, with the fairly recent exacerbation of the drone, just too drive the stupidity & pointlessness through the stratospheres membrane) the sonic dystopia & 24 hour battering/desecration of personal-quarter have become the new normal in a race to inaugurate ignorance & 360 insensation & oblivion. The urban environment has by & large become hell, & it’s overwhelming due to machines, which are almost always given some kind of perverse priority. The sheer obscenity of it – men in high-vis with power tools… blowers (could a utensil possibly sink any shitter?), jack-hammers, drills, chainsaws… honestly! I could just slink round on a BMX shooting them dead! With a silencer ^ ^! I dream of it! Anyway, back to this delightful documentary that begins to examine the details of this crucial topic. No director is responsible, rather a trio of “producers” (Andrew Brumme, Brandon Vedder & Patrick Shen) who are associated with the Waerbeke Movement, an organization that is working to – “foster silence, tranquility and space, essential values for the quality of life”. It sounds a bit wet! & indeed, in some cases, it is! But I would definitely rather deal with this dampness than having my brains-scoured & flayed in some purgatory metroplex with a thousand I-phone zombie piss-ants burying me alive in extreme commercial frivolity.
Sound-pollution really isn’t a joke either, it’s severely detrimental to mental health & has very real & serious physical side effects (it’s ranked as the second greatest “major health burden” after air pollution by the World Health Organization, which really exposes the extremity of it’s nature). Hyper tension, high-blood pressure, stress, depression, anxiety & heart-disease are just some of the afflictions entailed. The disruption & prevention of sleep, one of our most essential & healing functions, is yet another misery-heaping, de-optimizing coffin-queue-jump thats flagged as progress or a by-product of it. Along with consulting specialists & researches, the movie inquires the opinions of secluded monks from both Buddhist & Christian backgrounds. It also showcases Greg Hindy, a young guy that is striding across the U$ on foot whilst keeping a strict vow of silence. Phillip Glass pops-up on a few occasions, mostly when explicating his “silent” composition, which I always thought was an absolute fuckin’ joke to be straight witcha’. There’s some profound film/thoughts in some sections & I relished the loose scatter-gun approach to this critical conundrum & the immeasurably precious values wrapped-up in this most important theme. The cyborg, user-serf, tech-slave scenario is also briefly examined as an inevitable part of the films retinue. The tools become the tyrants & digitizing your life takes on a whole new meaning. The message/subject may appear understated, but there’s nothing more nucleus….really’ really worth watching, sharing & ruminating on.
Transcendental Media
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1660926233?playlistId=tt4026570&ref_=tt_ov_vi