When did you last experience total silence? In Hark, the author Alice Vincent goes to extreme lengths to eradicate noise as she spends time in an anechoic chamber, a heavily soundproofed space designed to swallow up sound waves. There she becomes aware of the noises of her own body, from involuntary swallowing to the soft, high-pitched ringing in her ears. But rather than feel unease, she is “confronted with a comfort I couldn’t have imagined – and a familiarity with quietude I didn’t realise I was living in”.
Hark is a book about listening, being heard and the author’s shifting relationship with sound in the early years of motherhood. While working as a music journalist in her 20s, Vincent had been surrounded by noise. But now, in her 30s and plunged into domesticity, she finds herself craving quiet. She also examines how others experience sound, investigating misophonia, an acute sensitivity to everyday noises; deep listening, a practice that ensures the speaker feels heard; and the concept of “deaf gain”, which turns the notion of “hearing loss” into something positive and empowering.
