The Sound of Silence

It's the place between words, a slight pause before listening and after talking: silence. Poets and philosophers have fallen in love with the idea of what is left unsaid: the space where nothing exists but the shapeless abyss.

Sometimes defined a deafening void, silence is an art. It comes with its own grammar: forging words that go with any sound or message is no trivial thing. Silence is a dynamic and ever changing force. It's been revealed through the study of magnetic resonance that our brain is able to hear silence and it anticipates the sound.

In fact, during a pause, our cortical auditory areas are primed and lay in wait of a sound. If silence is an art, it was an artist who shared his intuition about its sound. In 1952, with his composition 4'33", John Cage offered three whole movements without playing one single note. More than music, Cage's revolutionary concept was in demonstrating what a beautiful instrument our mind is. For a full 4 minutes and 33 seconds, the pianist sat without touching one single key.

During that time, the audience could listen to the silence. This meant anticipating a melody and, with ears primed, paying attention to all the small creaks and noises inside the music hall, normally covered by the music -- whispers, yawns, someone coughing, and the distant murmurs seeping in from the street. Cage wanted to prove that absolute silence doesn't exist. Even in a perfectly insulated space, we can hear the beat of our own heart. His point was to demonstrate that our lives are immersed in a sound continuum. "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."

But if it's technically true that even silence has a sound, it is also true that silence has its place.

• As a useful tool in negotiating -- well timed, thoughtful silence during contract or pricing negotiations can make the difference in gaining the upper hand.
• As a legal protection -- as spelled out in the Miranda "you have the right to remain silent..."
• As an inner quality -- in spiritual practices for transformative and integral growth.
• As a reverential gesture -- to show respect to a person.

Water will not be the only resource in scarce supply, silence will too. From Silent Night to Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence and Deep Purple's Hush, we've been humming about silence in pop culture. We also learned about the wisdom of silence in popular sayings like "silence is golden" while we're still figuring out how to be still. We're greeted by a stony silence after an argument, and we've occasionally enjoyed the peace and quiet of a relaxing moment.

Comments

[Joe Raasch]

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[peter vajda]

I think we truly live in a culture where, to paraphrase: (human) nature abhors a vacuum (in this case silence). Surrounded by electronics that keep people engaged, and emotionally distant from themselves, many have evolved to a place where it's just plain threatening and emotionally and psychologically uncomfortable and unnerving to be alone with one's self...never mind others. Many feel unless they are, informally, teaching, telling, fixing, selling, talking, talking, talking, talking, they are not in control or being seen or recognized...so their only recousre is to be "on" all the time. For them, silence is deafening and self-defeating.

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[Valeria Maltoni]

Joe -- that's one way of going about it.

Peter -- an interesting take yours: we feel validated only when we can raise our hand and be counted. That's pretty sad. I'm with the reverential gesture and the quiet time taken to recharge and feel how rich we are inside.

DotMySpot -- We appreciate any comments here to remain constructive and non commercial. Thank you.

[CK]

Thank you for this. I often strive to "silence my mind" as many speak of. There's so much wisdom and therapy in it. I love how you point out where silence has its place and the story about Cage.

[David Reich]

Valeria, I've seen that DotMySpot popping up in comments on several blogs over the past few days.

[Valeria Maltoni]

CK -- we often think that if we're silent we miss an opportunity to show the world how smart we are. As you point out, there is tremendous wisdom, and power in silence.

David -- Yes, I saw that too. But here at Conversation Agent we include everyone who chooses to be part of the conversation so I thought I would extend an invitation.

[Peter]

A lovely post. I sometimes start meetings with silence/stillness. You notice the difference.

Another thing that works for me is to listen for silence/stillness in noise.

Having done this for awhile I've noticed ( perhaps delusionally) that the silence is always there.

Which leads me to wonder about the nature of full vacuums.

As an aside Joe's is a lovely insight which ought be repeated a 1000 times. It speaks of the way of life when you don't have one.

The concept of deafening silence is also an interesting one. For me silence/stillness causes you to hear the sound of your own mind. For some its maddening noise. No wonder we are always on.

To use a computer metaphor. I suspect what is happening is that those that can, process and those that can't any more, route.

Thanks for the space.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Peter:

This reminds me of the instances when the power goes off. Suddenly you can hear the quality of silence underneath.

Love the computer analogy.