In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “what you see is the inability of people to love each other, …called the sound of silence.” We often think of silence in terms of metaphors – as the inability to love, as a kind of solitude, as a kind of release, or as a sweetness. Despite all these metaphors, people still deal with it as a natural thing, as a part of the human moment. Yet so many people still have no idea what to do with it.
In a Ted Talk given by John Francis in 2008, we hear about a silence which lasted 17 years, and the very first words he says after it. More importantly, we hear about the silence which allowed him to change the world. In his talk he shares the story of what motivated him, and what he learned through the silence. If we could just say nothing, and listen to the world and everything that goes on in it, what would we learn? In his talk, Francis describes learning how the world moves, and how people are moved – he talks about an experience where he’s teaching a class without using words, and the kind of discussion and learning it invites in a classroom; it was enough to even teach him, despite him being the instructor.
This silence is everywhere. Buddhist monks practice this silence and stillness in their meditation, and as such, they learn to see the world in ways which one would never hope to imagine. I like to sit in silence before I begin writing a poem, so that I can hear what the world has to tell me. The sound of silence isn’t a silence at all; in fact it is a vivid and loud resonance that creeps throughout the world. It isn’t an inability of people to love, but rather a call for people to listen and love. To conclude this blog, I want to share with you a piece by John Cage, called 4’33”. It is supposed to get us to listen to the art which is the world around us.
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