I thought I'd experiment a bit with the pairing of different uses of speech (rhetorics) with silence, to see if the experience of silence varies depending on what kind of language it follows. After working an 8ish-hour shift at Slim Goodies, I returned home and gladly accepted a break from speech, and decided to make it one with intention. As I showered and began to unwind, I noticed something peculiar. Though I was very much alone in my very quiet house, I was still experiencing a carrying-over of the background noise of the restaurant. The din of the diner chatter and clattering of plates continued to play, like a ghostly record. The strange echoes in my ears were like the scent of pancake batter and oil soaked into my clothes and nose, the film of grease on my skin, like a sticky residue on my brain. As I lay down to nap, as I relaxed and let go of consciously-directed thought, the din became louder and the script I had repeated all day even started to surface in floating fragments: "...how do you want your eggs...", etc.
While there are certainly moments of a more quiet mind than others, and this is something that can be sought to expand through meditation, I am becoming very sure that I have never myself experienced silence, inside or outside. And even when refraining from speech, it is very rare that my internal dialogue of language ceases. The word "silence" seems to me much like the word "nothing"--in that exists in constructed concept, but not in lived experience. Or perhaps I can be proven otherwise? Takers?
I find contemporary composer John Cage's interpretation of silence to resonate with my own. Silence is not about a void or an absence, but the sounds, however seemingly insignificant, that fill a space (traffic). I would just like to supplement his definition for my own purposes to include the sound from inside the mind in addition to the ambient. That is music, and that is language: the-everything-in-between.
"John Cage on silence"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y&feature=related
And a rendition of his infamous piece 4'33":
I am glad you discovered John Cage. You two are a match made in heaven. I played him while you slept in the long car rides. To further your silence via musical soundscapes, look up Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Edgard Varese, Schonberg, and Morton Feldman. Some modern composers might also inspire you. Phillip Glass, and Steve Reich come to mind.
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(not to ruin the fun, but it is an April Fool's gag... but one right on target for what you are working on!)
This is so great, for so many reasons (my favorite is the gesture of licking the stamp and slapping it down on the knee). I wouldn't have been surprised if they (whoever that "they" may be) were really working on something like this, blurring the line more and more between humans and their devices, until we are all cyborgs with touch screens embedded in our appendages. The idea of transitioning from using technological devices to communicate with other humans to communicating with the devices themselves seems pretty sci-fi, but I suppose has already began to occur (think voice-activated speed dial and On-Star). I think interesting too is their recognition of over 80% of our total communication being body language, something that is by and large lost in cyber communication (apart from perhaps Skype). How often do we divine the tone of a text message and respond emotionally, only to find that we've imposed on it layers of meaning that were never intended? To me this warns for the avoidance of relying on cyber communication to conduct personal relationships, but perhaps we as a species are already too far-gone for that now. Perhaps all we can do now is improve upon the quality of that cyber communication, increase the percentage of what is captured and minimize what is lost...
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