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Hymns of Praise: from Morisson Hymns to the Silence
Translated from Dutch. View the original post
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What It's Like to Spend 72 Hours in Silence. Silence In a glass house in the Swedish countryside, you can retreat completely three days. You just have to 'be' there.
Silence: we have little of it. Noise is a side effect of development. Air traffic, moving cars, horns and sirens, a buzzing fridge, upstairs neighbors and lower neighbors: our lives are accompanied continuously by a dissonant melody.
Noise pollution is a generally misknown form of environmental pollution and is, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), an underestimated risk to public health. In addition to hearing damage and tinnitus, environmental noise is associated with, among others, cardiovascular disease, depression, insomnia, aggression and anxiety disorders. The European Environment Agency estimates that around 12,000 Europeans die premature death every year due to excess noise.
At the same time, we tend to avoid any silence. Noise that is forced upon us is annoying, but we like to do a little bit on top of it ourselves: we displace noise, or the lack of it, with a scaring radio, TV buzz or a playlist that brings a soundtrack to the daily grind via earplugs. In our pocket, a phone pings, rings and vibrates. Every gap in a conversation should be filled with words — rather a hollow phrase than the discomfort of a silent get-together.
It is a remarkable fact: on the one hand, we romanticize silence, on the other hand we seem terrified of it. Because what will we find in that confrontation with noiselessness?
After a few months, the constant jammer called corona, I think I'm longing for that confrontation. In June, just before midsummer, I travel to the Western Swedish region of Dalsland. On the border of forest and water, on Lake Iväg, there is a glass cottage, a so-called 72 hour glass cabin, run by the Dalslands Aktiviteter outdoor sports and adventure centre.
A stay here is an exercise in silence.
The first glass structures were rigged as part of an investigation into the relationship between nature and stress reduction. Five city dwellers with notoriously stressful professions — a German police officer, a French taxi driver, a British journalist, a British TV presenter and an event organizer from New York — exchanged their hectic lives for three days being alone in the Swedish wilderness. Each of them stayed in their own glass cabin. Without electricity, without neighbors and far from the inhabited world.
The researchers found that the stress level of the subjects had decreased by 70 percent within 72 hours. Their blood pressure and heart rate declined while their well-being and creativity increased.
Now, this outcome does not seem to me to be reserved for staying in a 72-hour cabin. Go for three — or two, or five or eighteen — days alone with a tent or a motorhome, and that you leave the forest less stressed than when you entered it.
But it's about the idea: three days and nights constant view of heaven and earth. And, in this case, its aesthetics. The cottages meet all the stereotypes of Scandinavian design — simple yet modern, built from only natural materials, stylish — and they stand in picturesque locations: on a cliff, on a lake, adjacent to a vast forest. Well, not far from my cabin there is another one, and the activity center is barely a kilometer away. But from my location, no human or structure can be distinguished.
Nothing to do
An additional advantage of staying here: everything is arranged for you. The bed is staggered and all meals are delivered in the vicinity of the cabin. All you have to do is, well: are.
Three days no work, no commitments, no household chores. And also: no electricity for three days. No hot water, no kitchen or bathroom (a compost toilet), no reading light. No phone, music or news.
Read also: The Scandinavian 'friluftsliv' as a solution to the hustle and bustle of the city.
Three days of nothing, you'd almost think — even though there's no such thing as nothing. That which continues in everyday life for nothing, or just for the backdrop of real life, suddenly becomes everything there is: the sky, the light, the clouds. The Journey of the Sun through the Sky. The weather and the changing colors. #hymnofpraise
Noise pollution is a generally misknown form of environmental pollution and is, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), an underestimated risk to public health. In addition to hearing damage and tinnitus, environmental noise is associated with, among others, cardiovascular disease, depression, insomnia, aggression and anxiety disorders. The European Environment Agency estimates that around 12,000 Europeans die premature death every year due to excess noise.
At the same time, we tend to avoid any silence. Noise that is forced upon us is annoying, but we like to do a little bit on top of it ourselves: we displace noise, or the lack of it, with a scaring radio, TV buzz or a playlist that brings a soundtrack to the daily grind via earplugs. In our pocket, a phone pings, rings and vibrates. Every gap in a conversation should be filled with words — rather a hollow phrase than the discomfort of a silent get-together.
It is a remarkable fact: on the one hand, we romanticize silence, on the other hand we seem terrified of it. Because what will we find in that confrontation with noiselessness?
After a few months, the constant jammer called corona, I think I'm longing for that confrontation. In June, just before midsummer, I travel to the Western Swedish region of Dalsland. On the border of forest and water, on Lake Iväg, there is a glass cottage, a so-called 72 hour glass cabin, run by the Dalslands Aktiviteter outdoor sports and adventure centre.
A stay here is an exercise in silence.
The first glass structures were rigged as part of an investigation into the relationship between nature and stress reduction. Five city dwellers with notoriously stressful professions — a German police officer, a French taxi driver, a British journalist, a British TV presenter and an event organizer from New York — exchanged their hectic lives for three days being alone in the Swedish wilderness. Each of them stayed in their own glass cabin. Without electricity, without neighbors and far from the inhabited world.
The researchers found that the stress level of the subjects had decreased by 70 percent within 72 hours. Their blood pressure and heart rate declined while their well-being and creativity increased.
Now, this outcome does not seem to me to be reserved for staying in a 72-hour cabin. Go for three — or two, or five or eighteen — days alone with a tent or a motorhome, and that you leave the forest less stressed than when you entered it.
But it's about the idea: three days and nights constant view of heaven and earth. And, in this case, its aesthetics. The cottages meet all the stereotypes of Scandinavian design — simple yet modern, built from only natural materials, stylish — and they stand in picturesque locations: on a cliff, on a lake, adjacent to a vast forest. Well, not far from my cabin there is another one, and the activity center is barely a kilometer away. But from my location, no human or structure can be distinguished.
Nothing to do
An additional advantage of staying here: everything is arranged for you. The bed is staggered and all meals are delivered in the vicinity of the cabin. All you have to do is, well: are.
Three days no work, no commitments, no household chores. And also: no electricity for three days. No hot water, no kitchen or bathroom (a compost toilet), no reading light. No phone, music or news.
Read also: The Scandinavian 'friluftsliv' as a solution to the hustle and bustle of the city.
Three days of nothing, you'd almost think — even though there's no such thing as nothing. That which continues in everyday life for nothing, or just for the backdrop of real life, suddenly becomes everything there is: the sky, the light, the clouds. The Journey of the Sun through the Sky. The weather and the changing colors. #hymnofpraise
From Morrison - Bring It On Home To Me
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