Cutting Out the Noise

What kind of things did I like? What kind of people did I really want to be with? You know. And the only way I could think of to find out was to just cut out all the noise around me and stop performing for a few moments and just listen to what was inside me. I think there comes a time when you need to do that. Now maybe in order to do it, you have to go to the Sahara, and maybe you can do it at home. But you need to cut out the noise. — André Gregory from MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ

I watched that a few days ago, and it has stuck with me since then.

So many things were said in that movie, so many ideas communicated. You could write for days about each topic brought up, but let’s focus on the above.

I was thinking about how increasingly difficult it is to do that, cut out the noise, and the guilt we feel when we finally manage to do so, because at the end of the day, it’s a privilege.

When is the right time to do so? For how long? I guess that would look different for different people.

I felt compelled to try to represent my thoughts visually.

How does one represent these thoughts visually?

I finally came up with something whilst watching the news, I sketched it out on a paper next to me.

The Sketch

I took the idea to p5.js, where it evolved a bit, finding its true form.

Gif of the Final Result

I went for dull colours and low brightness in order to properly emphasise the centred exclamation mark and its glow.

A lot of things call for our attention these days, even if we can’t cut the noise out completely, we can still be more deliberate about what we dedicate our time to, what types of media we engage with.

We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying — Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations