On Silence

As I sit, I hear the distant call of birds, muffled by heavy doors. I hear the clicking thud of laptop keys. I hear an occasional scrabble above me, from the dormice taking residence in the ceiling. I hear flies throwing themselves into the windowpane.

Earlier, on my walk in the country, I heard crickets. I heard my feet beating the pavement. I heard the scrape of denim as my legs brushed past each other. I heard the distant wails of a cow in a neighbouring field.

A couple of years ago, I was recovering from a pain that required healing via heavy doses of distraction, any head-on tackling of the issue to be administered sparingly, under strict supervision. It was during this period that I became deeply uncomfortable with silence. 

Of course, silence is never really silence. We live with a soundtrack playing around us at all times. Like in a film, it is mostly unnoticed and unquestioned, probably not interacted with, unless you happen to be living in a musical. It’s not a character but part of the setting – a playground to facilitate action, nurture ideas and stimulate thought. The opposite of distraction, it encourages internal movement, which was exactly what I was running from at this time. 

When you do decide to tune into these active silences, they are unpredictable. Confronting. The least peaceful of all is real quiet – that sinister nothingness before the jumpscare in the horror movie – when the birds go to sleep, the flies cease buzzing and your body grows still. This silence is fragile, uneasy, liable to break in the sigh of a floorboard or the fingers of a tree at your window. 

When I was seeking distraction, I did so in the comfortingly familiar sounds of well-loved music, in mindless TV shows I knew by heart, in fidgety small talk that didn’t warrant answers worth listening to. As I have moved into a more confrontational phase of healing, it has been bittersweet to hear what notions and revelations arise in the natural song of my surroundings, and grieve a little for all those lost when my fear of quiet was enough to make me close my ears to everything else.