[Image: Prototype of the SpeechJammer, a “gun” which makes it functionally impossible to talk.
Read about it at Wired.]
From whiskey river:
Silence is radical. When sustained, it has an effect on your perception comparable to that of any number of chemicals with which you might seek change. Your vision transforms, to start with; you suddenly find yourself absorbing what’s on the periphery, massive amounts of once-invisible data assailing your pupils. When you’re not preparing your next remark, your hearing capacity expands, too: the changing rhythms of the wind; the muted thud of a teardrop hitting the wooden floor; your neighbor’s beating heart. And taste, and smell, they’re amplified and shifted, as well — a cup of tea sipped without the surrounding dialogue (Earl Grey. You don’t? How about English Breakfast, then? No, no sugar, thanks. Watching my weight. Do you have one of those carrying trays? Wow, that sure is hot.) is a more intricate cup of tea. Silence gives you the opportunity to know any number of an object’s facets that typically disappear behind the verbal screens we erect constantly, unthinkingly, between our selves and our environments. And surely the power of wordless touch is one each of us knows; I need not expand on that.
(Anna Wood [source])
…and:
Silence
There is the sudden silence of the crowd
above a player not moving on the field,
and the silence of the orchid.The silence of the falling vase
before it strikes the ?oor,
the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.The stillness of the cup and the water in it,
the silence of the moon
and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.The silence when I hold you to my chest,
the silence of the window above us,
and the silence when you rise and turn away.And there is the silence of this morning
which I have broken with my pen,
a silence that had piled up all nightlike snow falling in the darkness of the house—
the silence before I wrote a word
and the poorer silence now.
(Billy Collins)
…and:
At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep – just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don’t do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life’s length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.
(Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters)
Not from whiskey river:
Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.
(Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth)
…and:
Q: Why do I love thee, O Night?
A: Because you know I will never answer.
(attributed to Vera Nazarian)
…and:
[To still all those inner voices and arguments which keep us from writing, she recommends the following exercise.]Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop it into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it into the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won’t do what they want — won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it up all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your shitty first draft.
(Anne Lamott [source])
These days, a successful standup comedian makes his or her living primarily from televised or pre-recorded video performances. Within recent memory, though, their big non-live revenue stream came from albums. Like the writers of radio dramas, great comedians have always understood that small silences can often induce the biggest responses. A particular master of this sort of controlled quiet is Bill Cosby; herewith, two of his bits which play especially well with silence:
[Below, click Play button to begin The Giant. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:30 long.]
[…and here’s Chicken Heart. Same instructions as above, of course. This clip is 12:24 long.]
(And by the way, this isn’t the first time I’ve posted the “Chicken Heart” routine here (although the first time was several years ago). Sorry. It’s just so great.)
Jayne says
Aw shucks. Dillard and Lamott: two of my favorite ladies.
Why is it your Friday’s always resonate? I took the sprite to the beach today w/two of her friends. In my book bag was… can you guess? Aha, Dillard’s Teaching. (Kid you not.) (Btw, the very first story in this compilation–Total Eclipse–is the best “marriage crumbling” story I have ever read. Bar none.) After reading her short, Living Like Weasels, I wrote a letter to Dillard in the blank bottom half of the story’s last page. I was more than a little ticked off that I hadn’t stumbled into her sooner in my life. (Though I had, but not as soon as I’d have wished if I had known I could wish such a thing.) No matter, because of her–and to a great extent, I might add, other significant Sensei with whom I’ve had the great fortune to become acquainted, I am learning to grab my one necessity, to dangle from it limp, and yield. (Er, that doesn’t sound quite right, does it? But dammit, Dillard can wave her wand and even the incomprehensible makes sense!).
John says
Haha, yes: the italicized metaphor does indeed ignite some of the wrong neurons and synapses. :)
Love the coincidence of your reading Dillard at the beach yesterday. (I was confused at first by the title, but realized you meant Teaching a Stone to Talk Oh, THAT one is lovely, isn’t it?) For anyone who hasn’t read it, here’s the last few bits of the Weasels essay:
Stalk your calling: I’ve always loved that.
When I first encountered her, I waxed euphoric in an online writers’ forum and was surprised to find that one guy, at least, hated her writing; he thought it was pretentious and overblown — overwritten. In hindsight, I’m not as surprised (liking, even loving a writer’s style is no proof that it must be liked, or loved by everyone). But my gosh, the things she can do with a metaphor and the language surrounding it.
And you know how happy it makes me — the hint that you might’ve begun circling your own calling. ‘Bout damned time, if so. Ha.
cynth says
For those of us who wear hearing aids, the silence when we take them out is deafening for just a moment before we calm down and hear the whisperings in our ear.
I would like to add to your post just slightly with the following quote from the bible, (I promise you I am not thumping it at the moment) from 1Kings: 11 He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
I am frequently annoyed at that passage as I am not a fan of “sheer silence” for any reason. But oh, the imagery in that passage speaks to me even though I don’t want to hear it (irony, pun or whatever you want to call it aside).
Recaptcha has John, in it…strange…
John says
I have to confess that although I read the entire Bible once, I’ve never read anything but individual passages on anything but a very casual basis ever since. That one may as well be new to me! After all the “[a cataclysmic thing happened] but the Lord was not in it” images, followed by “a sound of sheer silence [with no such disclaimer about the Lord],” I guess it’s safe to gather that the Lord was finally putting in an appearance there, at least? In which case, given the anonymous (and slightly peevish) voice’s question to Elijah, I’d have to say: Uh-oh, Elijah. Just… UH-OH.
My hearing aids don’t have a power switch as such. To turn ’em off and on, you sort of cock the main unit’s battery compartment open and shut, respectively. When shut, the battery comes into full contact with the circuit board… but the aids don’t go “on” right away. Instead, there’s a pause of about five seconds to give you the chance to hang them on and plug them into your ears. (This minimizes the chance that you’ll get a shot of squealing feedback while your hand is up there waving around in front of the microphone.) And because it almost never takes the full five seconds to actually accomplish this — not once you’ve been doing it for a few years — well, that is as silent as the world gets for me: the brief moment when I’ve got this soft-plastic tight-fitting but non-functioning thing blocking the ear canal. (There’s always a split-second of suspense, waiting for the sound to wake up.)
And MY reCaptcha has someone named Stewart in it. Whoever he is, he apparently ymenths.