The lust for total silence has only grown stronger since I first defined it in the sub way weeks ago. The boost in its signal strength might be a result of how much more focused on sounds and their absence I have become because of these explorations. But if it were only being sick of high volumes, then my twenty-four hours alone on the Cape with a minimum of artificial noise of any kind, and maybe a good scream à la Lowell mill-girls, should have cleared the desire for silence. Yet the need is still in me, ribald and growing, like one of those hospital bacteria that feed off what should kill them.

George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, loc. 211