Beautiful noise? Rather give me sounds of silence
NOBODY seems to remember the joy of shared silence. It is one of the great gifts to human relationships. You have to be really attuned to somebody to be able to share a long silence with them. I often see couples sitting together and not speaking to each other, but they are obviously not sharing the silence. They are probably each experiencing a different clamour of input – noise, music, messages, greetings, advertisements, you name it. Each in a rowdy world of their own, brought directly into their brains, courtesy of WhatsApp, ChatSnap, Yappchat, GroupYAp, Facebook or whatever.
They are each in their own space, They’re not sharing anything.
Sharing silence is something very different. And precious in today’s noisy world.
In fact, there is hardly any total silence in the world. Even in a wide open spaces of the Karoo there is continual sound – the clicking of insects, the tweeting of birds, the sigh of wind in the dry grass and the distant bleat of a sheep. There’s a similar noisy silence to be found in the city, even late at night. If you listen to it you will hear the rumble of a faraway train, the sound of a siren, the whoosh of an airliner overhead, music from a passing car, the quiet conversation of the couple next door.
The silence we share is in fact the symphony of our world. Each space plays a different movement.
When two friends sit together in silence what we are really doing is sharing the music of our planet. Two people in harmony don’t feel the need to fill every silence with chat, just as any music lovers can share a concert without having to say: “Did you hear that cello?” or “Hey, listen to that flute” every few seconds.
Some of my most precious moments have been while sitting quietly with a good friend simply listening to the sounds we call silence. Whether it’s at home in the city or walking in the open spaces of the Karoo or the cool forests of the Garden Route.
I have also enjoyed long kilometres of silence driving through the countryside with a companion. There’s no need to comment on every mountain or grazing flock of goats. We look and listen and share.
I find it rather sad that so many of my friends go to great lengths (and expense!) to avoid hearing that precious silence. They leave a TV set burbling away in a corner all day, or turn on loud music or keep up a continuous conversation with friends on their electronic devices.
In public places they also do all they can to drown out the silence – in shops, on aircraft, in waiting rooms the electronic noise is pumped into our ears. Try sharing a little silence some time. In these austere times there’s the added benefit that silence costs nothing.
And it doesn’t waste water.
Last Laugh
Three old men were sitting together quietly on the Sea Point promenade, staring out to sea.
After a long silence the one old chap muttered: “Oy!” Another long silence and the second sighed loudly. The third man stood up and said: “If you guys are going to talk politics I’m leaving.”