July 10, 2007
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shouting range
I wonder if there exists a kind of shouting range place. Basically it would be a place where you could pay to go and you’d travel out into the middle of no where in secret. The place you would go would be somewhere beautiful and natural and with no other people for as far as you can see. No other people anywhere near where they could possibly hear you even if you shouted at the top of your lungs and let your word echo throughout the region. There’d just be no one there. No one could find you. Nothing. Just you.
And you could stay as long as you want and bring with you whatever you want, even whoever you want if you really want to spoil the solitude. But the main thing would be the true sense of absolute privacy and escape when you went there. Nothing you say would ever be recorded, analyzed, or examined unless something or someone you brought did those things. So you could say anything. You could shout out all your angers and your fears, scream your rage, weap or pummel yourself. You could say things you wouldn’t ever say in real life, rehearse made up conversations that you wouldn’t want anyone to ever hear you say. You could do anything at all out there were only the world itself can see you without worrying about the consequences. Nobody would ever know. Mostly you could just vent.
Is there such a thing? If not there ought to be. Really. You might argue that what’s the point. Anybody can just find a private place and do their venting. Maybe where you live that’s possible, but around here is exceedingly unlikely. Everywhere you look there is the overwhelming pack of people . Every nook and corner of every park I’ve been through has filled with various people seeking a little bit of a reconnection with nature. Even if you go to the foresty camping grounds around here there are still always some other groups and families out and about camping. You may never actually run into them, but there’s a chance and that chance increases considerably if you happen to be shouting at the top of your lungs.
The key to the shouting range is that your privacy and anonymity would be guaranteed protected. You would know with absolute certainty that there is no one within the vicinity who could possibly hear what you have to say.
And you might say you can simulate the same thing with a kind of sound proof chamber which is the kind of thing that I am sure exists. But no. I don’t think that’s the same at all. The feeling of being a part of nature is essential. Who really feels right shouting at a blank wall? It wouldn’t make me feel better to do that. I’d just feel claustrophobic.
Maybe if you made the room into a giant interactive theater which would be projecting images of a beautiful isolated area complete with devices to emulate the sounds and smells and feel of the sun and breeze.
Even so I don’t think it would be the same. Everybody’d kind a know you were the in the chamber and have a sense of what you were doing. After you left people would ask questions. Also you’d have to wonder if the administrators of the experience are trustworthy or are they watching and recording and anlayzing whatever you are saying. Maybe they would even mean well, but it would ruin it to me.
Perhaps another option would be to develop some kind of portable device that works like an ipod only when you have this thing active anything you shout or say into it would not be heard from anywhere by anyone except yourself if you choose to put the earphones on while you are doing it.. So you could then find your own peaceful area that means something to you. A place to let off steam.
The problem is people would still pretty much know you are doing it if they saw you shouting into a device that is clearly not your phone. So we also develop some kind of holographic add on that can project a face as if you weren’t screaming even as you are. That might create some weird uses like people telling off their boss or professor straight to their face without their professor or boss ever knowing the difference. I guess that’s a valuable add on but that’s not the point of the device and I wouldn’t really be interested in that part at all. Cheating at conversations isn’t the point. The point is rather to be able to relieve oneself of your haunting thoughts.
Anyway, so the shouting range seems like the best option to me. But I wonder if such a thing existed and I went there would I feel my concerns melt away in the vastness and beauty of the place I am in. Would I let it all go and just enjoy the peace and quiet and say nothing? Or would I instead shout a truth tentatively at first but once I did the flood gates would open and I would scream and scream endlessly…
I wonder which. Since the shouting range doesn’t exist maybe I’ll never really find out and maybe that’s for the best. Still, I think if such a thing did exist I definitely need to go there.
