{"id":19671,"date":"2017-10-12T17:36:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T21:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=19671"},"modified":"2017-10-13T11:05:10","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T15:05:10","slug":"quiet-on-the-set","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/quiet-on-the-set\/","title":{"rendered":"Quiet on the Set"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image:<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: “<\/em>Cuando las calles á solas (When the streets are alone),” by Oiluj Samall Zeid. (Found it on Flickr<\/a>, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!)]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nobody speaks to me. People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me and — and all that sort of thing. But no one speaks to me. I sometimes think that no one can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Edna St. Vincent Millay [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mum Is The Word<\/strong><\/p>\n

The League of Quiet Persons meets
\nmonthly. Its quarters are a cavernous
\nwarehouse away from traffic. Its
\nbusiness is not to discuss business.
\nMinutes are read silently and tacitly approved.
\nMembers listen to rain argue with corrugated
\niron, a furnace with itself. Glances
\nare learn\u00e9d. It is not so much refuge
\nfrom noise the members seek in such company
\nas implicit permission not to speak,
\nnot to answer or to answer for,
\nnot to pose, chat, persuade, or expound.<\/p>\n

Podium and gavel have been banned,
\nindeed are viewed as weaponry.
\nA microphone? The horror.
\nSeveral Quiet Persons interviewed
\nhad no comment. A recorded voice
\nat the main office murmured only, “You
\nhave reached the League of Quiet
\nPersons. After the tone, listen.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Hans Ostrom [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Six Inches<\/strong><\/p>\n

One minute I’m meandering down
\na country road on a magnificent fall day,
\nlost in thought, radio playing,
\nand the next minute I feel my wheels<\/p>\n

on the loose gravel of the shoulder,
\nthere’s a deafening bang and I’m
\nclimbing out of what’s left of my car.
\nThe cop who came to investigate<\/p>\n

was pretty sure I’d been speeding
\nbut settled for lecturing me about how lucky
\nI was to walk away from such a crash,
\nthat I’d be dead if my car had hit the tree<\/p>\n

just six inches further to the left.
\nAnyone could see that what he said was true,
\nbut it also struck me as I stood there
\nwatching his car flash red and blue<\/p>\n

that it was equally true the accident
\nwould not have happened at all
\nif a raging storm some sixty years ago
\nhadn’t blown an acorn six inches closer<\/p>\n

to the road than where it would’ve landed
\non a day as sunny and calm as the one
\nwe were in. It was a point I thought deserved
\nserious exploration—though perhaps<\/p>\n

not just then, I decided, with a hundred birds
\nsinging their tiny hearts out overhead
\nand the sky raining down yellow leaves,
\nand definitely not with the cop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jeff Coomer [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

You can listen to silence, Reuven. I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it…<\/p>\n

You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn’t always talk. Sometimes—sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Chaim Potok [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Milo walked slowly down the long hallway and into the little room where the Soundkeeper sat listening intently to an enormous radio set, whose switches, dials, knobs, meters, and speaker covered one whole wall, and which at the moment was playing nothing.<\/p>\n

“Isn’t that lovely?” she signed. “It’s my favorite program—fifteen minutes of silence—and after that there’s a half hour of quiet and then an interlude of lull. Why, did you know that there are almost as many kids of stillness as there are sounds? But, sadly enough, no one pays any attention to them these days.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Norton Juster [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Lines of Force<\/strong><\/p>\n

The pleasure of walking a long time on the mountain
\nwithout seeing a human being, much less speaking to one.<\/p>\n

And the pleasure of speaking when one is suddenly there.
\nThe upgrade from wary to tolerant to convivial,
\nso unlike two brisk bodies on a busy street
\nfor whom a sudden magnetic attraction
\nis a mistake, awkwardness, something to be sorry for.<\/p>\n

But to loiter, however briefly, in a clearing
\nwhere two paths intersect in the matrix of chance.
\nTo stop here speaking the few words that come to mind.
\nA greeting. Some earnest talk of weather.
\nA little history of the day.<\/p>\n

To stand there then and say nothing.
\nTo slowly look around past each other.
\nNotice the green tang pines exude in the heat
\nand the denser sweat of human effort.<\/p>\n

To have nothing left to say
\nbut not wanting just yet to move on.
\nThe tension between you, a gossamer thread.
\nIt trembles in the breeze, holding
\nthe thin light it transmits.<\/p>\n

To be held in that
\nline of force, however briefly,
\nas if it were all that mattered.<\/p>\n

And then to move on.
\nWith equal energy, with equal pleasure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Thomas Centolella [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Image: “Cuando las calles á solas (When the streets are alone),” by Oiluj Samall Zeid. (Found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!)] From whiskey river: Nobody speaks to me. People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Edna St. Vincent Millay, Norton Juster, et al., on silence (chosen and inadvertent): 'Quiet on the Set'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[410,247,1393,5,251,4159],"tags":[100,559,2977,3096,4616,4617,4618,4619],"class_list":{"0":"post-19671","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hearing","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"category-essays","13":"tag-edna-st-vincent-millay","14":"tag-silence","15":"tag-thomas-centolella","16":"tag-norton-juster","17":"tag-chaim-potok","18":"tag-hans-ostrom","19":"tag-jeff-coomer","20":"tag-quiet","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/cuandolascallesestansolas_oilujsamallzeid_thumb.jpg?fit=600%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-57h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19671"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19678,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19671\/revisions\/19678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}