Public life is loud, reactive and full of people mistaking noise for importance. But there is a difference between speaking when something must be said and simply filling the silence.
What do you listen to while you work? I struggle to multitask – typical male, I guess – so the music I have on in the background can’t draw my attention away too much as I edit the pieces we’re going to publish on P&I each day.
As I write this, I’m listening to New Grass by Talk Talk. It’s a song I love. It feels to me like being barefoot on dew-damp grass as the sun rises on a warm day. Like much of Talk Talk’s later work, it’s a piece that’s made especially lovely by its use of space, restraint and refusal to fill every gap.
Talk Talk’s enigmatic and very much not-your-typical-pop-star frontman Mark Hollis – who died in 2019 – loved this idea of using sound sparingly and deliberately, and coupling it with silence. He once told a music magazine: “I like silence. I get on great with silence…if you’re going to break into it, just try and have a reason for doing it.”
There are plenty of people in public life who would benefit from considering that idea.
We would probably all benefit from them considering that idea.
Much of the public sphere is loud, fast, reactive and performative. It can feel like there’s a race where the prize goes to whoever can react, denounce, counter-denounce or declare absolute certainty first.
We see it in Trump’s late-night rage-posts – I picture him puce-faced in silk pyjamas, tiny hands mashing the keyboard of a Trump T1 phone, threatening judges, journalists, allies, enemies and whoever else has irritated him that hour; in politicians who discover a microphone and treat it as a hostage; or in figures such as Nigel Farage, for whom silence appears to be less a choice than a medical impossibility. It makes you want to say “get in the bin, Nigel”, but it turns out his likely replacement as Member for Clacton is already there.
The issue isn’t really that people are talking too much. It’s that so much of what the public hears can feel detached from judgement, evidence, responsibility or purpose.
And not all that noise is the same, is it? There is a place for anger and breaking into the silence. Silence over the horrors in Gaza, or in the face of racism, poverty, corruption or abuses of power, sits somewhere between cowardice and complicity. We all need to speak out about those issues, loudly.
One of the privileges of editing P&I is seeing the depth of knowledge that sits behind the pieces we publish. Not all of it is polished, and you won’t always agree with it. Some of it’s angry. Some of it’s urgent. But it’s all connected to something real and important, and informed by evidence, history, lived experience, professional knowledge and sometimes the frustration of years of watching something go wrong.
P&I this week has published analysis from John McCarthy giving us calm strategic judgement in the noisy China/Trump debate; Mark Beeson warning about the danger of Trump having control over the US nuclear arsenal, Facebook whistleblower Kelly Stonelake encouraging policymakers to move past age-ban politics for social media and towards making the platforms safer, and Michael Keating challenging easy explanations of populism with the much harder work of lifting productivity. And that was just Wednesday.
These pieces aren’t noise – they are focused attempts to make power, policy and public argument a little less murky. Breaking into the silence with a reason.
When I listen to Talk Talk’s final two albums – Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock – the songs don’t just sound played to me, they sound carefully, thoughtfully, delicately assembled. Quiet seems to be one of the musical instruments – like every sound has earned its place to sit alongside the bits in between. Those notes land more powerfully because they have a reason to break into the silence.
Similarly, public life doesn’t need monkish silence, but it does need fewer empty, shouty and pointless notes. It needs people willing to speak out when something has to be said, and disciplined enough not to mistake noise for importance.
Before you break into the silence, have a reason – and when you have that reason, say it loud and clear. Mark Hollis understood that. Others should too.
And if all of this has left you craving five minutes away from the noise – pop the headphones on, find a sunny spot, kick the shoes off and feel the ground beneath your feet, close your eyes and listen to New Grass. You can thank me, get angry about it, or give me a counter argument later.
Martyn Pearce is the sub-editor at Pearls and Irritations