Eat my noise, the law seems deaf

If 'dirt' is essentially things in the wrong places, 'noise' is sound at the wrong time. And/or place. The trouble is there seems to be a fair bit of sound in Malta that has lost its rightful home. Ask the people down at the Marsa Sports Club.

They will tell you they tried to get the law courts to stop the Santa Venerians from letting off their festa fireworks from practically the club's back garden. Explosions can be a tad dangerous, they argued, and they just might irritate people who think that the sound of bombs belongs to quarries rather than one's backyard.

The Court, presided by the Chief Justice no less, saw their point. As reported in The Times (June 24), His Honour said he "sympathised" with the club "because fireworks were causing disproportionate inconvenience to the public when opposed to what the fireworks enthusiasts considered to be their rights".

Further, "the explosions ... caused great inconvenience and terrified pets and children and disturbed persons who were ill".

What the Chief Justice thinks is, however, irrelevant unless it has a basis in the laws of the country. In this case the court was "not aware of any law which regulated noise pollution". The dilettanti were free to pollute and pollute they did, with a vengeance. The circumstances of the case, in other words, provoked His Honour's desire but took away his performance.

I cannot help sympathising both with the sports club members and with the Chief Justice. It is quite unbelievable that in a country where modifications to the landscape are so tightly regulated (and rightly so), and where people work up a sweat over UCAs and ODZs (again, things in the wrong places), such an important thing as the soundscape seems to be a duty-free zone.

It's not just that Malta is a terribly noisy island, it's that most of the noise is gratuitous. Take the two great rogues, fireworks and cars - the soundscape counterparts of a bulldozer in an ODZ. I can understand why people should enjoy the colour and choreography that make our summer skies.

What I can't fathom are the bombs, those horrible and pointless explosions that rip through every nerve of one's body and cause endless headaches to collectors of fine porcelain.

Nor can I understand why so many young men 'pimp their ride' by replacing the silencer with a 'silencer' that emits a throaty growl that would sound bad on a Lamborghini, let alone a Lada. Or rip out the back seat to make space for a 'sound system' that makes conversations in the car, nay the village, impossible. Eat my Black Eyed Peas, Jack - garnished with my dust.

I'm simplifying. In fact, I actually understand the source of both these neuroses and others like them. There are three reasons why people feel the need to be noisy. The first is existential, shall we say. Sound populates emptiness and makes us feel like we are not alone, which doesn't explain why headphones aren't commoner. The second reason is pure and simple bad manners. Our language offers up some fantastic insights here. The word hamallu is notoriously hard to translate, but one of the first things that comes to mind is sound.

Hamalli are thought to be noisy, and pejoratively so. On the contrary, to be kwiet (quiet) means to be balanced and diligent. A ragel kwiet (quiet man) minds his own business, avoids drink and gambling, and gives other men's wives a miss; a mara kwieta (quiet woman) keeps to herself, tends to her family and gives other women's husbands a miss. The lack of 'noise', in other words, is morally desirable.

Since I don't believe that fireworks enthusiasts and boy racers are especially immoral or prone to existential angst, we must look for another reason. That reason is power.

To understand this we must once again draw an analogy with space. To appropriate and/or transform the landscape (by despatching a bulldozer to an ODZ, for example) is quite possibly the surest expression of power there is. That is why kings built palaces and fenced off vast hunting grounds. Likewise, people may express their power (or desire for it) through making an impact, indeed transforming, the soundscape.

I think there is a link between being powerless and being noisy. If you can't have the landscape at least you can have the soundscape, so to speak. Having both would of course be ideal, but the former is much harder to get by than the latter. Especially if you happen to live in a country where land's expensive but the law seems deaf.

I am not saying that fireworks enthusiasts and boy racers brush up their sociology of power before zooming off to cause mayhem in the streets.

Dilettanti actually feel a strong passion for the colours and sounds of petards, and silencers presumably summon great feelings for the second bunch (though I hate to think where that leaves them vis-à-vis Freud). My point is that, with noise, power comes into it. The power to decide which sounds are in the right places at the right times. Just as with ODZs, it's a matter of politics after all.

My guess is that the Chief Justice's comment will not go unnoticed, and nor will the growing piles of letters in the newspapers complaining about the decibels. I'd say we're in for a busy time discussing the politics of sound. Some will be disappointed. Fireworks dilettanti, for example, are traditionally a powerful group (because they play with fire to get close to the gods), but it remains to be seen how they will fare in the media. They, like hunters and other 'strong' lobbies, have never really engaged with the media, and this puts them at a disadvantage in the context of contemporary politics.

As for the silencer boys, they can only wish the ADT more of a deep, sweet slumber.

mafalzon@hotmail.com