Silence is a performance in its own right, a script rewritten in every culture. Some revere it, others dread it.
As for a universal definition of silence? It’s easier to snare a cloud with a butterfly net – ephemeral, ever slipping through our fingers.
The 6th-century Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu mused, “Silence is a source of great strength.” A West African proverb counters, “Silence is also speech.” In Aboriginal cultures, a quiet pause is a sign of respect and consideration, not a void to be filled. China’s Confucian values wrap silence in a protective cloak of dignity – better to hold one’s tongue than to unravel one’s pride.
Then, there’s the West. Where silence often rings louder than any shout. Where in 1963, Simon and Garfunkel strummed their way into history with ‘The Sounds of Silence,’ an anthem for the existential hum of modernity.
Years ago, I conducted an experiment where a group of about 20 teenagers were asked to sit a reasonable distance apart from each other in a field for five minutes and just listen. When they regrouped, some participants mentioned the sounds of cows mooing, of rustling leaves, of distant car horns. They all mentioned the low-flying jet passing overhead from an RAF base in nearby Wales. The irony of that was not lost on me.
But the real standout? A young lass who declared, “I could hear my heart beating.” A poet or a rockstar in the making.
Humanity is a symphony of communication – words, melodies, faces, bodies in motion. Yet, nestled among these instruments is silence. Not a mute button, but a shape-shifter, wearing different guises across the world.
For Native Americans, silence is a language of wisdom. Apaches wield it in the face of uncertainty, while mainstream Americans wield noise, filling the gaps with words, however empty. The Lakota people, as chronicled by Ella Cara Deloria, see silence as power, not absence: “We Indians know about silence. We are not afraid of it… The earth is always talking to us, but we should keep silent in order to hear her.”
Then there’s the chatter of gender. Since the dawn of Homo Erectus, when men stalked mammoths in silence and women spun stories around the fire, the spoken word has been an evolutionary balancing act. Maybe this contributes to the fact that men tend to speak less than women. Was the gender divide in conversation cemented by those primal instincts? A theory to chew over at your next dinner party, ideally with a prehistoric-sized steak.
And then there was American composer and music theorist John Cage. In 1952, at Maverick Concert Hall, New York, he staged the ultimate provocation: His composition – entitled 4’33” – was a composition of almost pure silence. Three movements, no notes. Just the coughs, the fidgets, the ambient hum of existence. Each performance, a new rendition, a fleeting masterpiece, never quite the same. The audience in each performance are unwitting collaborators. They shape it with their own noises, their shuffling, their coughs and momentary whims.
And then there’s Spotify, that mausoleum of echoes, where the piece is embalmed, played back like a ventriloquist’s trick rather than a living thing. But this defeats the objective of 4’33”- it’s exactly the same every time it’s played.
Silence today is personal, fractured. A monk in retreat and a New Yorker camping in the Sonoran Desert inhabit different voids. One finds clarity in the hush; the other scrambles for a CD of honking taxis and police sirens, the lullaby of a city that never sleeps.
Silence, ever the shape-shifter, rarely – if ever – the same twice.
Graeme Dinnen
ResourcesForLife.net
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