I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling fingertips. Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sun to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow.
Essentially neuter, silence, like light or love, requires a medium to give it meaning, takes on the color of its host, adapts easily to our fears and needs. Quite apart from whether we seek or shun it, silences orchestrate the music of our days... If it's true that all symphonies end in silence, it's equally true that they begin there as well. Silence, after all, both buries and births us, and just as life without the counterweight of mortality would mean nothing, so silence alone, by offering itself as the eternal Other, makes music possible.
~ from "Listening For Silence" by Mark Slouka with thanks to Alice Spicer
