A Bit of Quiet

The one thing I enjoy about reading is that it gives me a bit of quiet–that solitary experience of being directly engaged with a work where silence is necessary. During the day, we can be busy with a lot of things–things like running errands, talking on the phone, doing chores, etc. And if we spend our time relaxing by watching TV, listening to music, or playing games on our cellphones or on the computer, these activities busy the mind–grab our attention–rather than let our imagination run free.

But reading is something different because it requires silence to focus on the text. It’s an activity that requires continuous and intense concentration–one which can abruptly end if a single distraction or noise intrudes upon our reading session. Thus, it’s hard to read when there’s noise or music playing in the background, or if people are talking nearby. With reading, it’s as if we can only focus on one thing at a time. It’s not just words that we’re reading, but the ideas and scenes that those words generate that we must extrapolate to turn into something meaningful and coherent to us.

In essence, we’re trying to reach a sort of agreement with the author–one in which our interpretation of their words are the same with what we believe their interpretation of them is supposed to be. Even though there is no direct communication between us and the author, we trust that their ideas can be received and understood by us if we can follow what they’ve written: the chain of their logic, the scenes that they’re describing, the emotions that they’re conveying, the sequence of events that they’ve laid out, etc.

This process of interpretation and agreement between the author and the reader is one that is continuous and imperfect, since there can be confusion when something is unclear, or if a bit of information is missing. And because the reader is trying to comprehend, as closely as possible, what the author is saying (without error, of course), it requires intense concentration and imagination. Therefore, it’s an activity where noise and sound can be the difference between understanding the text, and not understanding it at all.