I didn’t grow up with a TV. I didn’t really watch TV much at all until relatively recently. But in the homes of a lot of my relatives, the TV is almost always on. It’s not that anyone is actually watching it. It’s just on, like another member of the family, another voice adding to the cacophony of voices in the house. It would blend in and get ignored.
But the one sure fire way to get me to look over at the TV was those rare moments when it went quite. We’re so accustomed to TV creating sound that a lot of people leave it on while they do other things just for the noise. But the second it goes quiet, I notice immediately and turn my attention to the screen to see what is going. Something different was happening and I wanted to know it was. I was intrigued and attentive just for that moment of silence. Then the sound returned and I would lose interest again.
I made a documentary on women performance poets when I was in college which involved traveling around the country for months over the summer filming over 100 women performing at open mics, slams, and various other events. During the performances, the poets would often raise their voices, shouting into the mic with all of the passion they could muster to try make the audience feel their words all the way down to their core. All of them would do this, in every city all across the country, men and women alike.
And then I went to an after party where the poets gathered in hotel rooms and shared their poems all through the night. But there was no passionate yelling, no screaming. Just soft voices trying not to disturb the other hotel guests in the neighboring rooms. Whispered confessions barely heard in the small hours just before the sun slipped over the horizon to creep through the hotel windows. And the emotional intensity of those poems was so much more palpable. Even when I had heard the same exact poem performed the previous day being belted out from a stage, the whispered words carried so much more intensity.
Quiet sincerity stood out so much in the midst of all of those shouting performances. Just like the commercial without sound grabs your attention. Just like the intense moment in the movie where all the sound drops out carries so much more genuine suspense than the gimmicky music cues that warn you that something scary is about to happen.
When everyone else is shouting and it doesn’t feel like anyone can hear you, your story, your message, maybe it’s time to turn down the volume and whisper.
