In Pursuit of Silence (41 page)

My family all gave me unflagging support throughout the long spells of silence and of noise in which the book was gestating. Ethan Prochnik, James Jodha-Prochnik, Samoa Jodha, and Elisabeth Prochnik each opened my eyes to pertinent subjects that deepened the book. Barbara and Brian Mead taught me much about the quiet refuge that can still be found in the English seaside. My parents, Marian and Martin Prochnik, offered the profound encouragement and love that nourishes all my writing. My children, Yona, Tzvi, Zach, and Rafael are an unremitting source of inspiration—and perspective. Watching them grow up concretizes my thoughts on the boundless possibility of the unknown.

My wife, Rebecca Mead, kept up a sustaining faith throughout the writing of this book that surpasses expression. Her editorial acumen sharpened and enriched the book throughout, just as her enthusiasm for the project made the writing of it possible. Her love gives pause to all the noise.

“The men whose labors”
:
Saia v. People of State of New York
, 334 U.S. 558 (1948),
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=334&invol=558
.

“sometimes you feel everyone”
:
Dr. Nancy Black and other members of the Brooklyn Friends Society at the Meeting House, interviews by author, spring 2008.

“thin voice of silence”
:
1 Kings 19:11–12.

“and when you have”
:
Sunita L. Williams, interview by author, spring 2008.

The night pass is
:
Williams, e-mail to author.

“the valleys echoed the sound”
:
Henry David Thoreau,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
, Robert F. Sayer, ed. (New York: Literary Classics of America, Inc., 1985), 317–18.

“Here, I can show you”
:
Dr. Mario Svirsky, interview by author, summer 2008. I interviewed Svirsky on several occasions and he broadened my understanding both of how we process speech and of the complex history of cochlear implants.

The roots of our English term
:
John Ayto,
Dictionary of Word Origins
(New York: Arcade Publishing, 1990), 477.

“Sound imposes a narrative”
:
Adam Cvijanovic, interview by author, summer 2008.

Recent studies using fMRI
:
J. A. Brefczynski-Lewis et al., “Neural Correlates of Attentional Expertise in Long-term Meditation Practitioners,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
104, 27 (July 3, 2007).

Neuroscientists at Stanford
:
Devarajan Sridharan et al., “Neural Dynamics of Event Segmentation in Music: Converging Evidence for Dissociable Ventral and Dorsal Networks,”
Neuron 55
, 3 (August 2, 2007).

affinities between certain stages
:
Mark Rosekind, e-mail to author, winter 2009.

45,000 fatal heart attacks
:
Dieter Schwela, e-mail to author, fall 2009.

A study released by the Johns Hopkins University
:
Andrew Stern, “U.S. Facing Possible Hearing Loss Epidemic,”
Reuters
, July 28, 2008.

“Anytime you can hear”
:
Tom Roland, interview by author, winter 2008. Roland met with me on several occasions and he vastly expanded my knowledge of the mechanism of human hearing, hearing loss, and cochlear implants.

You can buy a Hannah Montana
:
Today@UCI, “Greater Parental Guidance Suggested for Noisy Toy Use,”
http://archive.today.uci.edu/news/release_detail.asp?key=1702
.

one summer weekend
:
John Spencer, interview by author, June 27, 2008.

“Silence is not a function”
:
Gene Lushtak, interviews by author, summer and fall 2008.

“to be silent and listen”
:
Saint Benedict,
The Rule of Saint Benedict
, Timothy Fry, ed. (New York: Vintage, 1998), 16.

“entered the monastery to stay”
:
Brother Alberic, interview by author. Alberic received permission from the abbot to speak with me over the course of my stay at the monastery in the winter of 2008—and
gave generously of his time. I also engaged in a lengthy e-mail exchange with him after I left New Melleray.

at least one interfaith
:
Integral Yoga Programs, “Ten-Day Silent Retreat: Awakening to the Inner Light,”
http://www.integralyogaprograms.org/product_info.php?products_id=309
.

“Soothe the spirit”
:
Spa at the Cove,
http://www.spaatthecove.com/
.

Gene Lushtak and
:
Gene Lushtak, interview by author, summer 2008.

in the Bay Area
:
Patricia Leigh Brown, “In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind,”
New York Times
, June 16, 2007.

When I called her
:
Kris Bailey, interview by author, winter 2009.

“to place himself more intensely”
:
André Louf,
The Cistercian Way
(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1983), 60.

“Just as, if you”
:
Peter France,
Hermits: The Insights of Solitude
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 29.

spent three years
:
Benedicta Ward,
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
, revised edition (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 2.

“Go and sit in thy cell”
:
Ibid., 27.

A sniper named Robert
:
Robert Hayes Parton, e-mail to David Kaiser, winter 2009.

doctrine of tsimtsum
:
Gershom Scholem,
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism
, Ralph Manheim, trans. (New York: Schocken Books, 1965), 110–11.

guardian angels used
:
Avraham Yaakov Finkel,
Kabbalah: Selections from Classic Kabbalistic Works from Raziel HaMalach to the Present Day
(Southfield, MI: Targum Press, Inc., 2002), 203–7.

“I can hardly open up my mouth”
:
Lawrence Fine,
Safed Spirituality: Rules of Mystical Piety, the Beginnings of Wisdom
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984), 62.

“How did He produce”
:
cited by Gershom Scholem in
Origins of the Kabbalah
, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, ed., and Allan Arkush, trans. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 450.

“mazes of silence”
:
Arthur Green,
Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
(Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Printing, 1992), 317.

“Sometimes when I’m silent”
:
Alfonse Borysewickz, interview by author, fall 2008. I had multiple interviews and e-mail exchanges with Borysewickz that were important to my understanding of the place of silence in Christian theology.

“By the end”
:
Amber Vovola, interview by author, winter 2008.

“an enormous downstream”
:
Lidia Glodzik-Sobanska, interview by author, winter 2008. In addition to several interviews with Glodzik-Sobanska, we carried on an e-mail exchange that was critical to my understanding of the neurological effects of silence.

“allure her, and speak”
:
Louf, 60.

Silent Widows
:
“Women Who Prefer Silence,”
New York Times
, September 20, 1908.

Rancé had been a dazzling
:
Patrick Leigh Fermor,
A Time to Keep Silence
(New York: New York Review Books Classics, 2007), 52–59.

copying the angels
:
Scott G. Bruce,
Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition. c. 900–1200
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 25–28.

“As the great clock of St. Mark”
:
William S. Walsh,
Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1897), 190.

“Glorious and Immortal”
:
Dr. Adrian Gregory, “The Silence and the History,” in Jonty Semper,
Kenotaphion
(Charm, 2001). This is an official recording of silent remembrances.

“Its impressiveness is intensified”
:
Ibid.

But an oral history
:
Benedict Julian Hussman, “Voices from the Cloister; Oral Perspectives on the Recent History of New Melleray Abbey,” master’s thesis (University of Northern Iowa, August 1989).

75 percent of farmworkers
:
“Listen to the Warnings,”
Missouri Soybean Farmer
(January 2004).

“Let us sacrifice”
:
Pieter W. van der Horst, “Silent Prayer in Antiquity,”
Numen
4 (1994).

“Whereof one cannot”
:
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
, trans. C. K. Ogden (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1933), 189.

“Above all, silence about”
:
Martin Heidegger,
On the Way to Language
, Peter D. Hertz, trans. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1971), 52.

“silence points to a state”
:
Max Picard,
The World of Silence
, Stanley Godwin, trans. (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day Press, 2002), 20.

The Apaches, among other
:
Keith Basso, “‘To Give Up on Words’: Silence in Western Apache Culture,” in
A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication: Essential Readings
, Leila Monaghan and Jane Goodman, eds. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 77–87.

tradition of the “dumb cake”
:
Walsh, 350–52.

In the eighteenth-century
:
Lucinda Lee Orr,
Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia
(Baltimore, MD: John Murphy and Company, 1871), 44.

“Dumb Suppers”
:
Janice Van Cleve, “Traditions of the Dumb Supper,”
Widdershins
7, 5 (October 2007),
http://www.widdershins.org/vol7iss5/02.htm
.

Menon discovered that
:
Angela Castellanos, “Mapping the Brain’s Response to Music: fMRI Studies of Musical Expectations,”
Stanford Scientific Magazine
(February 17, 2008).

“Silence is golden”
:
Vinod Menon, interview by author at Third Annual Symposium on Music and the Brain, Stanford University, May 16–17, 2008. Interview on May 17.

“You hear a snap”
:
Dr. Rickye Heffner, interview by author, spring 2008. I had several phone interviews and multiple e-mail exchanges with Heffner. Her assistance was vital to my understanding of the evolution of hearing in general and sound localization in particular.

“The Evolution of Human Hearing”
:
Bruce Masterton, Henry Heffner, and Richard Ravizza, “The Evolution of Human Hearing,”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
45, 4 (1969): 966–85.

“sound shadow”
:
S. S. Stevens and Fred Warshofsky,
Sound and Hearing
(New York: Time Incorporated, 1965), 102–3.

The outer-ear channels
:
Dr. Tom Roland, interview by author, winter 2009.

huge “power gain”
:
Dr. Jim Hudspeth, interview by author, winter 2008.

“become adjusted to”
:
Morris Kaplan, “Surgeon to Study Noise-Free Tribe,”
New York Times
, December 4, 1960.

“Two Mabaans standing”
:
Robert E. Tomasson, “Surgeon Suggests Hearing Tests May Help to Diagnose Heart Ills,”
New York Times
, October 27, 1963.

“totally tuned in”
:
Jason Everman, interview by author, winter 2008.

made a remarkable discovery
:
Zhe-Xi Luo et al., “A New Eutriconodont Mammal and Evolutionary Development in Early Mammals,”
Nature
446 (March 15, 2007),
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7133/full/nature05627.html
.

“What was most revealing”
:
Zhe-Xi Luo, interview by author, spring 2008.

“I bite my teeth”
:
Randall Stross, “Edison the Inventor, Edison the Showman,”
New York Times
, March 11, 2007.

“almost direct to my brain”
:
George Bryan,
Edison: The Man and His Work
(Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2007), 102.

“Hitler sound waves”
:
“Professor Says Hitler Hypnotizes Listeners with Voice at 228 Vibrations a Second,”
New York Times
, December 29, 1938.

had a voice double
:
“The Voice of Hitler,”
New York Times
, April 19, 1944.

The American National Broadcasting Company
:
“Adolf Hitler’s Address on His War Aims Before the German Reichstag,”
New York Times
, October 7, 1939. Charts reproduced with text.

“The sexes of many animals”
:
Charles Darwin,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 84.

“What are myna birds”
:
Heather Williams, interview by author, summer 2008.

has been constructing sonograms
:
Eugene S. Morton, “Animal Communication: What Do Animals Say?”
The American Biology Teacher
45, 6 (October 1983): 343–48; and Eugene S. Morton, “On the Occurrence
and Significance of Motivation-Structural Rules in Some Bird and Mammal Sounds,”
The American Naturalist
111, 981 (September–October 1977): 855–69.

“cat-and-dog squabble”
:
Herbert N. Casson,
The History of the Telephone
(Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 153–55.