By Ernie Schenck
“Sometimes the best way to prepare ourselves to hear in a new and better way is to be still and silent.” —Buddha
Maybe you’ve heard about this. An app called Coffitivity. Basically, it re-creates the sound of a busy coffee house. It’s based on research that claims that the incessant clink and clatter—of spoons and cups, wooden chairs scraping across wooden floors, and, of course, the omnipresent drone of students and business people, musicians and soccer moms, to say nothing of erstwhile poets and novelists and screenwriters—is a virtual breeding ground for creative thought.
Like many of you, I’ve sat and worked in a lot of coffee houses. There’s something to be said for this, I suppose. The coffee, for one thing. The chocolate croissants, too. I like taking the occasional chocolate croissant break. And those shortbread cookies? Nothing like a venti misto and a shortbread cookie on a cold winter’s day!
But the clink and the clatter and the scraping and all that conversational soup sloshing off the walls, well… this is where I get off the train. Where some might see a rich stew of creative inspiration, sure to unlock the neural pathways of the brain and enable ideas to flow as freely as the Colorado River, I see the creative equivalent of the Hoover Dam.
This isn’t to say that you can’t have a good idea in a coffee house, on a train, in an airport bar or in a room full of screaming kids. You can. When I worked in Boston, I did some of my best thinking while commuting on a train. Needless to say, the noise level was closer to a Blue Angels flyover than evening vespers at a monastery. The snoring guy. The obnoxious cell phone caller. The twitterpated teenage girls blubbering over Justin Bieber. If there was a tenth circle of creative hell, this was it. Still, I managed.
But like an invisible message that can only be seen under ultraviolet light, there’s a deeper level of creativity that reveals itself in the presence of deep silence.
When I was in college, I played in a band. We used to practice wherever we could, mostly in our parents’ garages, sometimes in the basement. Our parents tolerated this, I don’t know why.
I wouldn’t have. Not so much because we were bad. We weren’t. But we were loud. So much so that one night, our bass player’s dad felt compelled to tell us: “Guys, turn it down would ya? I can’t hear myself think!”
Noise is like that, of course. It grabs your brain by the lapels, and it defies you to have a creative thought. That’s the thing about ideas, you see. True enough—sometimes they come barging in like a loudmouth drunk, all big and full of themselves, and nothing is going to get in their way. Not music. Not human voices. Not the guy with the jackhammer tearing up the sidewalk outside your window. But other times, they come creeping into your mind on little cat’s feet. Quiet as a crypt. You either hear them or you don’t. And that’s unfortunate because big ideas aren’t always the loudest. They walk on their tiptoes. They come in through the window like a zephyr, barely ruffling the curtains, scarcely with a whimper, and there is just no way you’re going to know they’re in the room if you can’t hear them.
As founder and vice president of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation and the author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, Gordon Hempton understands this more than most. “Silence lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. But silence cannot be imagined. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.”
We have an unfortunate relationship with noise. Where there’s noise, things are happening. Work is getting done. People are sharing ideas. Collaborating. Feeding off each other. This is good. This is productive. This is how advertising gets made, we think. And although you could spend an entire career believing this and making some very good advertising as a result, do not delude yourself. The transformative ideas, the kind that shake the earth and utterly disrupt the creative landscape forever, these come from a much deeper, and quieter, place.
I know it’s hard to find silence. Advertising agencies aren’t medieval abbeys. There are no vows of silence. There are no sensory deprivation tanks. But if you can find even ten minutes a day to close out the world and let the quiet wash over you, you might be surprised where it takes you. ca
Maybe you’ve heard about this. An app called Coffitivity. Basically, it re-creates the sound of a busy coffee house. It’s based on research that claims that the incessant clink and clatter—of spoons and cups, wooden chairs scraping across wooden floors, and, of course, the omnipresent drone of students and business people, musicians and soccer moms, to say nothing of erstwhile poets and novelists and screenwriters—is a virtual breeding ground for creative thought.
Like many of you, I’ve sat and worked in a lot of coffee houses. There’s something to be said for this, I suppose. The coffee, for one thing. The chocolate croissants, too. I like taking the occasional chocolate croissant break. And those shortbread cookies? Nothing like a venti misto and a shortbread cookie on a cold winter’s day!
But the clink and the clatter and the scraping and all that conversational soup sloshing off the walls, well… this is where I get off the train. Where some might see a rich stew of creative inspiration, sure to unlock the neural pathways of the brain and enable ideas to flow as freely as the Colorado River, I see the creative equivalent of the Hoover Dam.
This isn’t to say that you can’t have a good idea in a coffee house, on a train, in an airport bar or in a room full of screaming kids. You can. When I worked in Boston, I did some of my best thinking while commuting on a train. Needless to say, the noise level was closer to a Blue Angels flyover than evening vespers at a monastery. The snoring guy. The obnoxious cell phone caller. The twitterpated teenage girls blubbering over Justin Bieber. If there was a tenth circle of creative hell, this was it. Still, I managed.
But like an invisible message that can only be seen under ultraviolet light, there’s a deeper level of creativity that reveals itself in the presence of deep silence.
When I was in college, I played in a band. We used to practice wherever we could, mostly in our parents’ garages, sometimes in the basement. Our parents tolerated this, I don’t know why.
I wouldn’t have. Not so much because we were bad. We weren’t. But we were loud. So much so that one night, our bass player’s dad felt compelled to tell us: “Guys, turn it down would ya? I can’t hear myself think!”
Noise is like that, of course. It grabs your brain by the lapels, and it defies you to have a creative thought. That’s the thing about ideas, you see. True enough—sometimes they come barging in like a loudmouth drunk, all big and full of themselves, and nothing is going to get in their way. Not music. Not human voices. Not the guy with the jackhammer tearing up the sidewalk outside your window. But other times, they come creeping into your mind on little cat’s feet. Quiet as a crypt. You either hear them or you don’t. And that’s unfortunate because big ideas aren’t always the loudest. They walk on their tiptoes. They come in through the window like a zephyr, barely ruffling the curtains, scarcely with a whimper, and there is just no way you’re going to know they’re in the room if you can’t hear them.
As founder and vice president of the One Square Inch of Silence Foundation and the author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, Gordon Hempton understands this more than most. “Silence lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. But silence cannot be imagined. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.”
We have an unfortunate relationship with noise. Where there’s noise, things are happening. Work is getting done. People are sharing ideas. Collaborating. Feeding off each other. This is good. This is productive. This is how advertising gets made, we think. And although you could spend an entire career believing this and making some very good advertising as a result, do not delude yourself. The transformative ideas, the kind that shake the earth and utterly disrupt the creative landscape forever, these come from a much deeper, and quieter, place.
I know it’s hard to find silence. Advertising agencies aren’t medieval abbeys. There are no vows of silence. There are no sensory deprivation tanks. But if you can find even ten minutes a day to close out the world and let the quiet wash over you, you might be surprised where it takes you. ca
Ernie Schenck (ernieschenckcreative.prosite.com) is a freelance writer, a creative director and a regular contributor to CA’s Advertising column. An Emmy finalist, three-time Kelley nominee and a perennial award winner—the One Show, Clios, D&AD, Emmys and Cannes—Schenck worked on campaigns for some of the most prestigious brands in the world in his roles at Hill Holliday/Boston, Leonard Monahan Saabye and Pagano Schenck & Kay. He lives with his wife and daughter in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
