Stand still in any commercial premises after five o’clock and the building begins to speak. It does not speak in words, but in the low, persistent 50Hz drone of refrigeration compressors, transformer coils, and ceiling-mounted air handling units that nobody has serviced since the late nineties.
We have spent fifty years filling our living spaces with tiny electric motors, each vibrating at its own idiosyncratic pitch. Taken individually, none of them register above a whisper. Taken collectively, they form a subterranean choral hum that defines contemporary life. When a substation trips and true silence descends, the effect is almost terrifying.