it's oh so...

Lately I’ve found myself becoming more and more interested in silence. I’m just starting grad school so a sizable amount of my time lingering in the that very same silence has been sitting in new rooms with new people, everyone staring awkwardly at anything and everything except their peers, themselves desperately awaiting the professor to stop by and break up the tension a bit. It’s a bit juvenile, avoiding eye contact the first day, but it’s helped me realize that silence can very well become it’s own entity and swallow up a room. That silence is a beautiful moment, capable of highs and lows and the exact middle where no one’s saying anything because no one knows what to say.

At the same time I think there’s something vital to be said for mastering silence. For about three weeks I sat in on a conducting class, and the one thing that really hit me was the concept of silence in the preparation of music. The college’s new orchestra conductor, an animated yet cool spirit, taught the class. One day, he drove deep the fact that for a musician, a good part of your working and artistic life is spent in silence. You practice so you understand the music, and you perform the music once you’re ready, but that in between is when that silence flexes it’s grip. You contemplate your choices, determine what happens where, how to shape the phrases and how to say something original with words perhaps thousands have spoken before. Of course, you play things a multitude of times, work out the trial and error of every phrase in the expectation, and that is what makes it all come together, but before you can make noise you need to understand exactly what noises you’re making. And for that, you need quiet.

Right now, I feel good with silence. I used to feel like I needed to hear a constant stream of action, that it was the only way to feel I’m doing things worthwhile. Now, I’m actually ok with silence. Silence can be it’s own noise, stir up enough on it’s own. Besides, it gives me time to think.