On today’s On Point, guest host Jane Clayson interviewed Gordon Hempton, who describes himself as an “acoustic ecologist,” which is a pretty great professional title, if I ever heard one.  Hempton became an acoustic ecologist after a period in which an inescapable and painful sound replaced his normal hearing, pushing him to observe the world (when he recovered) through listening alone, and inspiring him to search for places devoid of human noise pollution.  (Meanwhile, on the Diane Rehm Show naturalist  E.O. Wilson was discussing his new book Anthill.  Wilson has focused his studies on insects because a childhood fishing accident blinded him in one eye, making him ill-suited for bird watching, which is by his description what most naturalists do).

Hempton advocates for the Federal government to re-route air traffic around certain designated national parks, creating refuges of natural silence.  He points out this is not an unheard (pun) of occurence: the FAA modifies take off patterns for two weeks so not to break Federer’s and Nadal’s concentration during the US Open at Flushing Meadows.  But perhaps the No-Fly Zone over northern and southern Iraq enforced by the United States in the 1990’s or similar exclusion zones over sensitive areas like the White House are more suitable, if not more active examples. Timely enough, Heathrow was silenced this week by the ash cloud from an erupting and nearly-unpronounceable Icelandic volcano.  The Guardian pointed out that people living around the busiest airport in Europe have gotten a short reprieve: to again hear their communities.  At the risk of getting the warm and fuzzies, drink in this quote:

Farzana Rafique, 43, a childminder, summed up the overall mood of the town as she returned home from Hatton Cross tube. “It’s just been a relief. Everyone usually gets a bit irritated by the noise, but I’ve noticed that people have been a bit calmer today. It’s made a difference to me, at least.”

Ugh, but the point is well-taken.  Even for those not living near an airport, machine-made decibels have crept their way up everywhere.  I came across a link submitted by a listener to the On Point comment thread for the story which pointed to a study of transportation-related noise pollution by county in the lower-48.  Judging from the map he produced of air traffic noise pollution, the sound of jets is pervasive. When Hempton describes the need to “carve out” places for silence he really nails the metaphor.  The magenta is a mass of sonic entropy from which we have to excise areas of calm.

I worked for Friedrich St. Florian for a month or so in his Providence office.  My workstation was adjacent to his 1968 photostat montage New York Birdcage: Imaginary Architectures.  I really love looking at it (and am always surprised to remember that this came from the same man that brought us the WWII memorial on the National Mall).  The drawing describes the “transparent, elusive, magnificent” waiting rooms in the air transcribed or drawn by planes in holding patterns. Bevin Cline, writing for MoMA notes that the rooms depend…

…entirely upon the airplane’s presence and on the pilot’s and air-traffic controller’s consciousness of designated coordinates. Once the craft has moved on, the parameters become irrelevant and the room disappears.

In the case of Hempton’s no-fly zones of silence, it is quite the opposite.  The parameters, no longer irrelevant, exist with or without the plane, given shape by the planes, their pilots, and the air traffic controller.  One could imagine making a kind of reverse casting of Friedrich’s project to create a model of these protected areas of audio-refuge.