Are Americans incapable of sitting in silence?
My AirPods broke for the five millionth time last Tuesday. I headed to the Apple store with a heart full of hope and a dream, only to have my soul crushed by a balding Genius Bar worker who demanded I buy a new pair (because mine were more broken than a New Year’s resolution in April). Replacing Apple products is an expensive and exhausting operation. Yet, I always find myself returning, knowing that, in just six months, I’ll have to do it all over again.
There’s something so addicting about the AirPod experience. When the phenomenon first began, I was back in high school, still stubbornly clinging to the slinky wires of my corded headphones. Everything changed when I had my first fully-immersed AirPod session. You’re telling me that now you can walk into a different room and the music will still be playing? Not only was this ordeal entirely wire-free, but it was also extremely intimate. With the noise-canceling feature switched on, I could block out anything and anyone around me. I’m pretty sure if you drove a firetruck straight at me with its sirens at full blast, I wouldn’t notice a thing, the clamor drowned out by the melodic voices of John Denver or The Weeknd.
The AirPod experience allows you to be totally free in a physical sense, and yet completely submerged in a mental sense. Physically, I can spin across my basement floor, leaping and twirling and high kicking without having to worry that my phone might go flinging out of my hands. Mentally, I can block out any annoying distraction, distasteful setting or big-mouthed co-worker and enter the realm of whatever song I select. Some days, I’m a jaded cowboy like Doc Watson. Other times, I’m effortlessly girly like Addison Rae or Sabrina Carpenter. And, most of the time, I’m somewhere trapped in 1977 with Fleetwood Mac or Electric Light Orchestra.
What happens when my AirPods break? Suddenly, I’m tethered to reality. Suddenly, I have to carry my phone wherever I go and make sure the wires of my earbuds don’t get too tangled up. Suddenly, I can’t block out every irritating clack of my classmates’ fingers or retreat into the psychedelic bliss of Tame Impala. I have to sit with myself and the noises of the world around me. It’s unnerving.
Think about the last time you were truly quiet — no computer whirs or background jazz or Grammarly ads. I have an inkling that most of you, like myself, cannot recall a moment when we ever forced ourselves to sit in undisturbed silence. Journalist and author David Foster Wallace thinks that Americans are afraid of silence, so much so that we pump sonic house beats or Christmas tunes into every boba tea shop and department store. We are uncomfortable when we must exist in a space in which we are left alone with our soundless thoughts.
My friend once told me that, on a decibel level, I was the loudest person she’d ever met. This isn’t entirely my fault, since to be heard at all in my household full of equally ear-splitting older sisters, I usually have to shout. I’m accustomed to announcing my opinions boisterously and breaking into song whenever I want. In America, we’re okay with being loud. But in Europe, that boisterousness didn’t fly. When my friends and I attended a Greta Van Fleet Concert in Paris, we shouted to each other over the blare of the band’s electric guitars. I overheard one Parisian lean over to his friend and murmur, “Can these obnoxious Americans behind us shut up?” as if we weren’t at a concert — a place that’s sort of notorious for allowing people to vocalize.
I think Europeans have somehow accepted silence in a way that Americans cannot. In fact, they often demand it. From my own experiences, I sometimes wonder if Europeans know that they are permitted to speak outside of their own bedroom, that speaking is totally an okay and usually welcome thing to do. In a cafe in Lake Como, Italy, I was mid-sentence when I pushed the doors of the tiny restaurant open. I had to halt mid-word to avoid rude glances by the six other customers, all of whom were tight-lipped. They wore no headphones. They sat side-by-side with their partners and friends. And they said absolutely nothing.
Why is it that we always have to say something? And why is it that, when we say it, we have to be loud? We just can’t seem to sit there without anything to stimulate or distract us from the events around us. I’ve been without AirPods for over a week now, and I’m feeling a little stir crazy. But I’ve also noticed the hum of my roommate’s Keurig, eavesdropped on the chatter of two friends debating which Trader Joe’s meal was superior outside my window and listened to the spindly legs of a squirrel running up a tree. Both physically and mentally, I am tied to where my feet are. And I kind of like it.
Gracie Eppler is a senior business analytics and English major from St. Louis, MO. Her three top three things ever to exist are '70’s music, Nutella and Smith Studio 3, where she can be found dancing. You can reach her at geppler@nd.edu.
