Editor's Message: Thinking Inside The Box

by Will Campbell 5/6/2010 12:24:00 PM

_{Note: The first part of this editor's message appears in the May/June issue of Hearing Review Products magazine. Combining my verbosity with the limited space in print required reprinting the column in its entirely here.
— Ed.}

Will Campbell

There always seems to be a moment for me—epiphanic, if you will — at the AAA show, which came after first being mesmerized by AudiologyNOW! keynote speaker, Gordon Hempton. An author and acoustic ecologist, Hempton has made it his life’s work to seek out and capture the world’s places of natural silence in hopes of documenting and preserving what few of them we have left. His presentation was absolutely captivating and I left it attuned to how we are so inundated by and accustomed to artificial noise. Suddenly I was hyper-aware of even the slightest sound: the creaking of a door, the squeaking of the escalator, the rumble of a distant jet taking off—and then there’s that little matter of the incessant din that emanates from the thousands gathered across the convention floor. Literally, there's no escape.

Or was there? Indeed there was and I discovered it on the show’s second day with Dave Jeans, HRP’s west coast advertising director. Passing by the ETS-Lindgren booth, Dave stopped and walked toward the sound isolation chamber they had set up on exhibit. "Check this out," he said opening the door and motioning me inside. I entered hesitatantly and he followed. Pulling the door closed, the endless low roar of the trade show vanished completely. All I could hear was nothing.

And then it happened: the moment.

I'm not claiming it to be any stroke of genius, but in a flash of being bathed in that almost absolute soundless stillness I imagined another market opening up for this segment of the industry, one that went beyond a booth's practical hearing screening applications and into a consumer-oriented therapeutic realm — and I could be its first customer. Seriously:I wanted one — I mean totally and impulsively wanted one. In my house.

See, I'm one of those who both cherishes and rather jealously defends and protects my peace. Like most of us I can handle the every-day sonic invaders -- the chopping of a helicopter passing overhead, the honk of a horn, the blasted stereo, the loud conversation of passersby, the screech of tires, the heated agument, the dog barking, the useless and deathless car alarm, the roar of an accelerating motorcycle. Noises like that are just facts of urban living. What I have little patience for is noise derived from inconsideration. So if a next-door neighbor lets their kid's really bad rock band practice in the ramshackle garage, or if the people across the street get home from a party at 2 a.m. and decide to continue it on their front lawn, or if a gardener fires up a weedwhacker too early in the morning, somebody's going to hear about it and frankly I don't care if they think I'm a bigger jerk than they are.

So while most sane and far more noise-tolerant people might dream of luxuriating in private custom-built amenities featuring wet or dry heat. Curmudgeonly me? I stood there in ETS-Lindgren's finest in acoustic systems wanting to be the first on my block to have my very own sauna of silence inside of which i could shut out the world or just escape to shed stress and decompress. Where would I put it and what would my wife Susan think? I'd deal with those aspects later. The more pressing and irrational issue as I stood there with Dave, was if my truck was big enough to haul one back with me to Los Angeles from the convention floor in San Diego. In those last few moments of solitude I imagined outfitting my very own "Quiet Room" with a comfy chair. I even toyed with the ideas of installing a sound system and a flatscreen TV, but realized such noisemakers would just defeat the purpose. Duh.

Of course, I came back to my senses almost immediately upon opening the door and stepping wincingly back outside into the tradeshow's rattle and hum. Sure I still fantasized about putting one in the basement, but rationality had returned and instead in my least professional voice and manner turned to the nearest ETS-Lindgren representative and said something decidedly less than profound or intelligent.

I think it was something along the lines of "Oh my gosh, that was beyond awesome!" followed by some hair-brained thought about how they should come up with a consumer line of their products. The gentleman smiled and nodded politely as if that wasn't the first time he'd heard such an idea.