Shhhh....
Hello you lost art.
As my charmingly wonderful mother is wont to recite this time of year:
Spring has sprung
The grass is riz
I wonder where
The birdies iz
While at first glance this might seem a simple rhyme (and well... it is), this little ditty also captures a bit of what I have been contemplating this week: the quiet but transformative power of silence.
Spring is a great example of a gradual, silent but seismic transformation-- there is no great trumpet fanfare when buds begin to form on the barren trees; there are no kettle drums pounding as the first blades of grass poke out of the thawing earth; there is no triumphant choir announcing the return of the hummingbirds. But all of a sudden, there they are: the leaves, the grass, the birds-- the sun, the warmth, the change of season. Quietly, gradually, spring sneaks up on us and completely reshapes our experience of the world.
The ultimate (and annual) quiet revolution.
Silence has also been on my mind as I settle into more of a transitional learning mode, as I talked about last week. Like many, I find I do my best learning when I pause and listen, trying to absorb the information in front of me. This is not always easy in this engagement-filled world (and as a natural extrovert) so I fail a lot-- but I am trying right now to stop and take more pauses, making and taking space for myself and others, listening with curiosity to what is said and what is not said, and generally sitting with silence when I can.
All of this requires a bit of effort to turn off the noise of everyday life. There are some interesting suggestions in this article about Jenny Odell's book on 'How to do nothing': For example, when it comes to managing our engagement with the online space, she suggests one can "withdraw your attention from social media and reroute it into more meditative pursuits that allow us to deepen our capacity for focus, connection, and curiosity. Doing so also allows you to “drop out of the stream of productive time,” create room for “non-instrumental” encounters that aren’t so goal-driven, and re-establish yourself as a human in space, not as an avatar in an Internet feed."
In doing so, you can create moments of presence and quiet observation to look back on and ask: "was there a time in the day when you were fully aware of the fact that you're alive? Were there even five or ten minutes where I was able to drop out of the stream of productive time? A lot of time it's just closely observing something. If you're really lost in observing something, you lose yourself. You're just very aware of that thing and those are moments where it's like, "Oh right, this isn't just the same day over and over again. This is today. It's one of a finite number of days I will be alive.""
Creating this kind of space has trade-offs and requires getting comfortable with JOMO (the joy of missing out), for example, but the pay-offs of creating more silence in one's life are palpable. In fact, silence is increasingly being used in therapeutic settings, and studies have shown that two-minute silent pauses proved far more relaxing than “relaxing” music at lowering stress levels.
Want a few tidbits of inspiration to start cultivating some silence in your life?
Did you know that there is a piece of music that is 'played' in complete silence? Check out John Cage's piece 4'33''
Speaking of silence and music, have you read "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Eagan yet? It is one of my fave books of all time, and one of the parts that continue to haunt me from that book involves a character who is obsessed with discovering and tracking pauses that happen in the middle of popular songs. (Think "Purple Rain" by Prince, when the chorus starts as one example)
I have not read this one yet (so can't fully vouch for it), but have been recommended "A book of Silence" by Sara Maitland several times and plan on checking it out
Perhaps you are looking for some TedTalk silence inspiration?
Finally, in rabbit-hole-related news, I really enjoyed reading this recent article about the dreams of a man asleep for three weeks. A very interesting, silently seismic experience
Is all this talk of silence too much? Well too bad! As penance for your insolence, please enjoy listening to one of my favourite songs, The Sound of Silence, either classically sung by the indomitable Simon and Garfunkle, or a modern version sung by the wonderfully acapella Pentatonix. Pick your poison, you punk.
And remember friends:
"No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."
Mark Twain
So I guess on that note, I will end this dispatch and leave you to your sweet Sunday morning silence. From one (sometimes) silently contemplative person to another, I am glad that we can hold space for each other to pause, grow, learn and breathe. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have a transformation-filled week!
Until next Sunday,
The Earnest Platypus