Day Three
November 22
Today was the day of aggravated silence. I felt repressed and cut off, frustrated by my desire to join into the conversations around me and knowledge that I could not. Though I was on edge, I realized that this sense of defeatedness was important. How many people experience this in their days and have no control over it? How many are trapped in a landscape of language they do not understand and cannot connect to? I thought of my time spent in South America, stranded from my native tongue. I imagined the populations of immigrants and children stuck in schools in which the symbols on the blackboard are meaningless to them. I imagined the individuals that are deaf and poor at lip-reading and must bear moments without an ASL translator. Language is a privilege of the geographically dominant, and divides.
I started to prefer to tune out the message of the sentences spoken and focus instead on the strange sounds they were built with. Dull and sharp, guttural and scratchy. Without the pre-existing mental framework of significance, words are but sounds, the spaces between barely identifiable.
I also began to notice the strain in conversation between some individuals. The dead zones and static moments, the affirmative statements that are not in agreement but are enough to allow the conversant the comfort to continue. I wonder the ratio of spoken expression to private mental commentary. I wonder how it varies from individual to individual, and how differing degrees of openness are learned. I suppose frustration can be fruitful.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Breathing through the nose
Day Two
Tuesday November 16
I realized today that in order to restrain myself from speech, I had been unconsciously keeping my mouth tightly sealed and my tongue trapped behind my teeth. Upon recognizing this, I had to pry my mouth open and exhale deeply. Even the act of opening my mouth created a sensation of relief, though tempted a noise to emerge. I noticed that any tiny sound I made broke the tension of silence, even an incoherent squeak or sigh. I hope to arrive to the point in this practice that I will not feel so much bodily pressure. I also would like to explore different forms and guidelines that exist for vows of silence-- am I allowed to laugh? Gasp? I have also been considering holding this one-day-of-the-week experiment with different angles--perhaps for a day I will permit myself to use sounds for expression, as long as I do not employ words. Or through the coinage of words see if I am understood. I do know that I need to work on my hand signs--I did incur several misunderstandings through vague gestures and misdirectioned pointing. It was interesting to see who of my acquaintances were entirely too uncomfortable to stick around after finding out I could not speak, and conversely who was excited by the challenge of figuring out a way around it by staying in my company. I was surprised that a couple of my close friends did not even realize I was being silent for many minutes after being with me. One comment I received was that it took them so long because they could sense my emotions and reactions through my eyes. This sparked in me a desire to spend one of these days focusing entirely on body language and how big of a part it plays in the ecology of communication.
This second day of silence defied my expectation that speech invokes disconnection. In my listening, I began to feel that all subjects were floating abstract until signified by a word. More on this as I dig into the Saussure's texts on the signifier and signified.
Tuesday November 16
I realized today that in order to restrain myself from speech, I had been unconsciously keeping my mouth tightly sealed and my tongue trapped behind my teeth. Upon recognizing this, I had to pry my mouth open and exhale deeply. Even the act of opening my mouth created a sensation of relief, though tempted a noise to emerge. I noticed that any tiny sound I made broke the tension of silence, even an incoherent squeak or sigh. I hope to arrive to the point in this practice that I will not feel so much bodily pressure. I also would like to explore different forms and guidelines that exist for vows of silence-- am I allowed to laugh? Gasp? I have also been considering holding this one-day-of-the-week experiment with different angles--perhaps for a day I will permit myself to use sounds for expression, as long as I do not employ words. Or through the coinage of words see if I am understood. I do know that I need to work on my hand signs--I did incur several misunderstandings through vague gestures and misdirectioned pointing. It was interesting to see who of my acquaintances were entirely too uncomfortable to stick around after finding out I could not speak, and conversely who was excited by the challenge of figuring out a way around it by staying in my company. I was surprised that a couple of my close friends did not even realize I was being silent for many minutes after being with me. One comment I received was that it took them so long because they could sense my emotions and reactions through my eyes. This sparked in me a desire to spend one of these days focusing entirely on body language and how big of a part it plays in the ecology of communication.
This second day of silence defied my expectation that speech invokes disconnection. In my listening, I began to feel that all subjects were floating abstract until signified by a word. More on this as I dig into the Saussure's texts on the signifier and signified.
Friday, November 19, 2010
And so it begins...
Day One
Monday, November 8, I observed my first day of silence for my thesis. I was not entirely sure what to expect, but I did feel a high grade of excitement for this sort of game I would be playing, with myself and all I would encounter that day. I started the day in my house with a minor slip-up: I addressed one of my roommate's cats out loud, as I do per usual when I am alone in the house with them. I repeated the glitch later on that same afternoon with another one of the house cats. If it had not happened more than once with these animals, and not at all with any of my human acquaintances, I may not have thought of the occurrence as anything significant. But I got to wondering why it is that humans even attempt to carry out these one-sided conversations with animals of other species? Why do we use words in our tongue knowing they will not be understood, except for perhaps the tonal inflections of the expression? Why not then instead make the appropriate noises and sounds that could communicate the same sentiment and could perhaps be more easily understood by the animal conversant? Or are we afraid to misspeak in the language of purrs and hisses? Should a species be limited to the language of its own, or shall we become bilingual to speak with birds? Here I found an example of how language is a limitation in the ecology of inter-species communication, in the coherence of Morton's "mesh". It "says" more to simply eat your fellow creature than discuss the matter of predation with it.
As I rode my bicycle to school, I noticed that the interior of my mind was far from quiet. My head was still cluttered with sounds, noise, blips of phrases and worded-thoughts. As I passed signs on the road, I heard the echo of their name resound and linger until another overlapped or took its place. I realized perhaps it would be good to meditate in the morning before beginning my silent days to clear some space in my psyche and calm its churning.
Perhaps the most peculiar observation I made in this first day was in my interaction with my classmates on campus. Though I had come prepared with a small Moleskin with written on the first page the words in bold: "Please excuse me from speech today. I am observing a day of silence. Thank you." in case an interaction should become excessively awkward, I realized as the day went on how little I needed this doctor's note. Many of my classmates that spotted me and approached me opened up with a spill of chatter, all about their days and worries and complaints and prospects, and wandered away to their to-dos never even realizing that I had not spoken a word in the exchange. I came to see that in many cases conversation can be very one-sided; all that was required of me was to be sounding board in which others could carry out their inner dialogue with a listener present-- no response was necessary on my part but an understanding smile and nod. Language in this context was clearly not ecological, or only ecological in the sense that the speaker was relating to his or her self out loud.
I ended my stretch of silence by departing early from campus to my home where I took a hearty nap before work. I work as a caller at Phonathon, a department of Loyola in which I am required to call alumni through a computer database, confirm their contact information, give them "exciting news and updates" about the university, and entice them to make a donation to the school. Of course silence is not entirely conducive to this activity, so I must break my speech fast upon arriving. In retrospect, I suspect that I returned home early on that first day of my practice in mental weariness; it does require much to hold my tongue, perhaps more than participation in mindless blabber. I also perhaps had a sneaking sense of isolation in being surrounded by the sounds of talk and not being able to partake. I did find my bicycle ride home most pleasing, and felt perhaps more immersed in the air around me than ever, confirming my prediction that refraining from language may create for the nonuser a heightened sense of connectedness to the ambient. I felt a calm as I fled.
Monday, November 8, I observed my first day of silence for my thesis. I was not entirely sure what to expect, but I did feel a high grade of excitement for this sort of game I would be playing, with myself and all I would encounter that day. I started the day in my house with a minor slip-up: I addressed one of my roommate's cats out loud, as I do per usual when I am alone in the house with them. I repeated the glitch later on that same afternoon with another one of the house cats. If it had not happened more than once with these animals, and not at all with any of my human acquaintances, I may not have thought of the occurrence as anything significant. But I got to wondering why it is that humans even attempt to carry out these one-sided conversations with animals of other species? Why do we use words in our tongue knowing they will not be understood, except for perhaps the tonal inflections of the expression? Why not then instead make the appropriate noises and sounds that could communicate the same sentiment and could perhaps be more easily understood by the animal conversant? Or are we afraid to misspeak in the language of purrs and hisses? Should a species be limited to the language of its own, or shall we become bilingual to speak with birds? Here I found an example of how language is a limitation in the ecology of inter-species communication, in the coherence of Morton's "mesh". It "says" more to simply eat your fellow creature than discuss the matter of predation with it.
As I rode my bicycle to school, I noticed that the interior of my mind was far from quiet. My head was still cluttered with sounds, noise, blips of phrases and worded-thoughts. As I passed signs on the road, I heard the echo of their name resound and linger until another overlapped or took its place. I realized perhaps it would be good to meditate in the morning before beginning my silent days to clear some space in my psyche and calm its churning.
Perhaps the most peculiar observation I made in this first day was in my interaction with my classmates on campus. Though I had come prepared with a small Moleskin with written on the first page the words in bold: "Please excuse me from speech today. I am observing a day of silence. Thank you." in case an interaction should become excessively awkward, I realized as the day went on how little I needed this doctor's note. Many of my classmates that spotted me and approached me opened up with a spill of chatter, all about their days and worries and complaints and prospects, and wandered away to their to-dos never even realizing that I had not spoken a word in the exchange. I came to see that in many cases conversation can be very one-sided; all that was required of me was to be sounding board in which others could carry out their inner dialogue with a listener present-- no response was necessary on my part but an understanding smile and nod. Language in this context was clearly not ecological, or only ecological in the sense that the speaker was relating to his or her self out loud.
I ended my stretch of silence by departing early from campus to my home where I took a hearty nap before work. I work as a caller at Phonathon, a department of Loyola in which I am required to call alumni through a computer database, confirm their contact information, give them "exciting news and updates" about the university, and entice them to make a donation to the school. Of course silence is not entirely conducive to this activity, so I must break my speech fast upon arriving. In retrospect, I suspect that I returned home early on that first day of my practice in mental weariness; it does require much to hold my tongue, perhaps more than participation in mindless blabber. I also perhaps had a sneaking sense of isolation in being surrounded by the sounds of talk and not being able to partake. I did find my bicycle ride home most pleasing, and felt perhaps more immersed in the air around me than ever, confirming my prediction that refraining from language may create for the nonuser a heightened sense of connectedness to the ambient. I felt a calm as I fled.
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