Add this (via Maria Popova) to my list of books to read: George Prochnik’s In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise. Popova quotes this conversation Prochnik had with a friend who was profoundly deaf for a few months as a child, and how the experience led him to become a visual artist. The experience, the friend recalled,

opened a world in which the images he saw could be woven together with much greater freedom and originality than he’d ever known. The experience was powerful enough that it helped steer him toward his lifelong immersion in the visual arts.  “Sound imposes a narrative on you,” he said, “and it’s always someone else’s narrative. My experience of silence was like being awake inside a dream I could direct.”

While I was writing The Distraction Addiction, a while bunch of new books came out that I need to read. Sigh. Or hooray. Right beside Prochnik should be Mike Goldsmith’s new book Discord: The Story of Noise, which also looks very interesting.