(..............................)
Turn off the stereo, the volume on the computer, the tv. What do you hear? silence? Hardly, right? Close your eyes, plug up your ears, buy those new Bose noise cancelling headphones. Any silence? Nope. Take a rocket into outerspace, open the door, walk out of the rocket and take off your helmet. Silence? How about we go join a Tibetan monastery and meditate until we can separate ourselves from this world and quiet our mind. Silence? Where is the silence?
It's right here. Right...... here..... Can you hear it? Of course you cant. Listen closer. Try to listen between that noise and the next, can you hear it? of course not. Cause that tiny space between the noises is smaller than a hypothetical particle. Take a pencil, sharpen it, stick it in your ear point in first, do the same with another pencil in the other ear, slam your hands against your ears, quickly, hard, fast. Silence?
Silence...
Silence...
It's right here. Right...... here..... Can you hear it? Of course you cant. Listen closer. Try to listen between that noise and the next, can you hear it? of course not. Cause that tiny space between the noises is smaller than a hypothetical particle. Take a pencil, sharpen it, stick it in your ear point in first, do the same with another pencil in the other ear, slam your hands against your ears, quickly, hard, fast. Silence?
Silence...
Silence...
Labels: Thursdays
12 Comments:
You might not sense silence in the aural way, but your mind can make it, if you feel at ease. Calm down.
With all due respect, anon, I think you're missing the point.
Nicely done, CA.
Loved it! Excellent post!!!!!!!!
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strikes a nerve. i can't even listen to classical music in my apt because the soft part simply aren't perceptible with all of the garbage trucks, buses, and drunken behavior on the street below. nevermind trying to achieve total golden silence- white noise is the best it gets around here. at work, i can barely concentrate unless i unplug the internet cable, turn off all phones, and tell everyone around me that though i am sharing the same space and appreciate them as humans in the abstract, i'd rather not engage with them.
maybe anon was referring to the chitavritti (incessant chatter of the mind) that yoga devotees try to calm during meditation. or, maybe anon is from an alien culture in which it is socially acceptable to give behavioral commands via the internet.
"...it is lost to me as anything other than a kind of psychic rape, a forced intimacy with sonic partners ."
I could say the same of silence.
Silence kind of scares me. I live in a reality where I can't totally lose myself in music, because I am always on call to answer medical emergencies that require me to monitor the VHF radio. Even when I am driving, I am too afraid that I could miss an oncoming car wreck or Tsunami approaching or baby crying to totally lose myself in noise. Instead I choose to turn it down so that I am not surprised by the horrors of the loud world.
Totally plugging your ears you still hear the sounds of your heartbeat. Ear to the conch, and you still hear the same. Silence is as silence always does... strives, but it is still a cacophany in it's own right... It has to be. It wouldn't survive without it's own.
In conclusion, I am not a scientist, just a normal jackass on the street, but I have yet to find silence that wasn't somehow accompanied by a deafening sound.
funny i remember asking my sister this EXACT question when we were kids about if silence really existed. i remember we were looking at a dripping faucet and i told her even though we didn't "hear" the dripping we couldn't block the imaginary "drip, drip, drip" from our minds. she told me i was crazy - she didn't hear anything.
so yeah - what silence? besides i avoid it like the plague. my tinnitus has gotten to the point where i NEED white noise to block out the screeching.
haha back to our conversation about "recorded" silence. i was thinking how funny it would be if a band put out a record of just "breaks"...
What's the sound of no hands not clapping?
This Wikipedia on John Cage's 4:33 has a lot of interesting information that I did not know about this famous composition.
This has nothing to do with silence, but I just want someone else to hear this because it is my new favorite music in the world.
T.J. Wade's Tribute to the Ruins
That wiki link is pretty good clay. I like this part - "In July 2002 composer Mike Batt (best known for being behind the 1970s novelty/children's act The Wombles) had charges of plagiarism filed against him by the estate of John Cage after crediting his track "A Minute's Silence" as being written by "Batt/Cage". Batt initially vowed to fight the suit, even going so far as to claim that his piece is "a much better silent piece. I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds." Batt told the London Independent that "My silence is original silence, not a quotation from his silence." Batt eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed six figure sum in September 2002."
my favorite 4'33" story - shortly after John Cage died, I was packing up in Michigan to go back to Rice. I was listening to NPR, and they had an excellent tribute where various people would talk about their relationship with Cage and their favorite piece, and then of course they'd play that piece. Cunningham, Tudor, etc.
Anyway, someone (can't remember who) said that their favorite piece was 4'33". Then there was about ten seconds of silence, until the announcer laconically said "Of course, we're not really going to play 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence."
so so true, HS. once i was in the arctic on an uninhabited desert island (dd, i didn't have *any* CDs with me) very near the magnetic north pole. i wandered away from base camp very very far - farther than i should have. i lay down on the side of a rocky hill. i think this was the first time in my life i heard silence. there is no air traffic up there. no vegetation to blow in the breeze. and very little breeze. no cars, people, trash trucks, or sirens. so just like a fractal, your brain goes farther into reality to find the sounds. once in a while, i could hear the 2 birds that were on the island - somewhere - who knows how far away. i couldn't get over how loud my down jacket was when i'd move. and then i started to hear the pulse in my ears. eventually the rhythm of it seemed to pound like the sine-wave-enhanced kick at a dance club. the sound of my eyes blinking could have been the snare. i stopped blinking my eyes and could even hear the little muscles of my eyelids when they'd move. if i moved any part of my body against the rocks the sound was thunderous. good times, good times. everyone should get to experience silence like that at least once in their lives. but almost no one does, i reckon.
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