Silence (Part Five) - Musings and Meditations
- filipvk
- Mar 1
- 12 min read
“There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.”
Beryl Markham
Audio version of this musing, read by me.
Dear friends,
Since the success of the novel 'Smilla's Sense of Snow' (1992) by the Danish writer Peter Høeg, more people have become aware that peoples in the arctic regions have many words for snow.
“In Nunavimmiutitut, the Inuktitut dialect spoken in Canada's Nunavik region, there are at least 53, including matsaaruti, for wet snow that can be used to de-ice a sleigh's runners, and pukak, for crystalline powder snow that looks like salt.
Within these dialects, the vocabulary associated with sea ice is even richer. In the Iñupiaq language of Wales, Alaska, Krupnik documented 70 terms for ice including: utuqaq, ice that lasts year after year; siguliaksraq, a patchwork layer of crystals that form as the sea begins to freeze; and auniq, ice that is filled with holes.”
“Studies of the Sámi languages of Norway, Sweden and Finland conclude that the languages have anywhere from 180 snow- and ice-related words and as many as 300 different words for types of snow, tracks in snow, and conditions of the use of snow.” (Wikipedia)
Fifty to one hundred and eighty words for different types of snow and ice means that these people can actually distinguish between just as many nuances and typologies of snow and ice, where to us it might be 'all the same thing'.
And perhaps this applies to many things in the world: the more familiar you become with something, the more variations, nuances and extremely subtle differences you will probably begin to discern. I can imagine that our ancestors several centuries ago probably had more words for 'soil' than we do today. More than today, it was probably of vital importance to be able to distinguish subtle differences in the nature, composition and texture of the fertile soil in the days before industrial agriculture, the mechanical plow, the giant harvest combines, artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Because that is also an aspect of the far-reaching precision of distinguishing between different types of snow and ice in the arctic regions: your own life can depend on it. A misstep on incorrectly identified ice can cause you to sink through it into the freezing water. One could perhaps argue that a strong motivation (survival, for example) contributes to more precise perception in all domains, not only in the world of snow and ice. The refined perception of the environment was undoubtedly related to the need to survive in conditions that were often inhospitable and dangerous, but also to a love for the greater whole with which indigenous peoples identified. You are likely to give more attention to something you love deeply.
Would it be possible to observe just as many differences in the realm of silence as in the phenomena of snow and ice? Could a highly trained observer such as an experienced tracker distinguish the slightest nuance or difference in energy in a silence, to the extent that different words could be coined for it?
I increasingly suspect that the answer is yes. Reality is invariably infinitely more layered, complex and nuanced than we usually notice in our daily lives, and as soon as we really focus our attention on any phenomenon, it seems that new layers and dimensions constantly present themselves in response to our attention.
The great physicist Richard Feynman said it like this: “Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention.” This quote makes it clear that attention is a necessary movement to enable the desired countermovement: that of the becoming visible of what we call ‘reality’ in ever more depth and nuance. Attention is the price we pay for perception and ultimately also knowledge and meaning.
I had been musing about this sort of thing for a while when I heard a story that confirmed my suspicions in a wonderful way. Someone told me about a film school student who had to record various sounds for a film project. Sounds in film and television are usually recorded separately, and that is a labor-intensive and quite difficult process.
For a specific film project, this student also had to record different types of silence. And like so many students, this young man also enlisted his parents to help him complete his task and thus to help him record silence for his project. And like so many loving parents, these people willingly responded to the call and went to various locations armed with recording equipment to record different types of silence. A school located in an old monastery, a nighttime stairwell with an elevator shaft, a hospital... different places with different types of silence. A fly, by the way, ruined the recordings in the stairwell. Silence is as fragile as a web of the finest silk, and it doesn't take much to dispel that silence. One tiny fly was enough, in that large stairwell at night.
When I heard this story, I also started thinking about whether I myself could remember different types of silence that really had a very clear character and individuality when I experienced them. And I could indeed recall some memories of silences that had stayed with me as being very special, and also really different from other silences.
There was the silence in a snow-covered forest in the Ardennes in the south of Belgium, where, on a winter solo hike in 2002, I had lost my way, literally and figuratively. Every trace of a path had disappeared under a thick layer of snow, and I wandered for hours through the magical silence of snow in the vast and deserted forest, which brings us back to our starting point as well. The silence in a snow-covered landscape is undeniably different from any other silence. I suspect that the special character of silence in a snow-covered landscape has to do with the sound-dampening properties of the layer of snow that covers everything, and which acoustically undoubtedly forms a blanket that absorbs sound rather than reflects it, almost like in a 'sensory deprivation tank'.
When I finally reached a road again after a few hours, I had enjoyed a bath in extraordinary silence, in silence and beauty, in the magic of a white world without any sound.
Or there was the deafening silence in the desert in Death Valley in California in the summer of 1994, a silence I spoke of in the first musing in this series on silence. A silence that was thick and intense like a blanket around us, an almost physically tangible silence that was so penetrating it made inaudible sounds audible, like the ticking of my wristwatch.
I also remember a silence in a cathedral somewhere in France, I can't remember where exactly. A silence that also had a very unique energy and character, and that seemed to be shaped by the sandstone columns and ornaments as if by a mold... A silence that also had a heaviness that, at least in my memory, was very different from the silence in the aforementioned snow-covered forest. A silence shaped by the heaviness of scents of incense and wood and cold stones, and of all the events that were etched in that building as if in the fabric of space-time itself, and which seemed to have left their imprint on the very silence which dwelt in the building .
There was the morning a very long time ago, when I was about fourteen years old. For some reason I had woken up very early that spring morning, before sunrise, and was sitting on my windowsill, watching nature awaken and listening to the extraordinary silence that, although I was in a (small) city, was very intense. Cities can also be very quiet if you are in the right place at the right time. It was a silence like a presence that became visible and audible in the hesitant morning light playing on gardens, grass, trees and bushes, before the sun rose and before the birds began their festive commentary on the morning.
So, after a bit of musing, I have already been able to identify several silences that left a strong impression and that I can still clearly remember after many years. If I really put my mind to it, I might be able to identify and recall many more. I don't know if I could reach fifty or a hundred different nuances, but who knows. So yes, I think there are indeed many different types of silence, each with their own energy and character.
Learning to distinguish and maybe even learning to name different types of silence would certainly also require us to to pay attention.
But why would we do that? What would be the point of learning to distinguish and name different types of silence? The question already betrays our culture's preoccupation with utility and direct return on investment.
Perhaps that is the first lesson we can learn when we start to listen intently to silence: that we must increasingly rid ourselves of this preoccupation with usefulness and return on investment.
Is there anything more useless than the refined perception of silence? Is there anything that can give less reason for any sense of merit in the sense of productivity and achievement?
And at the same time, wouldn't it be fantastic to immerse ourselves in this, and also particularly useful, in a different way than we usually define 'usefulness'? It is like art and poetry, which are also labeled as 'useless'. But at the same time we all know that art and poetry touch on the essence of our humanity, and that without these things there would be no life worth living, only a mechanical existence and mere survival. We all know that the value of life lies mainly in ‘useless’ things, and that what we strive for as useful is often void of worth. So why not focus our attention on something as useless as studying silence?
But refining our attention to silence could also help bring about a shift towards a more refined perception of life itself. Towards a much more subtle perception of the beauty of our planet, the wonder of the fact that we can perceive anything at all, and the magic of the very existence of anything at all. A fine-tuning of our antennae that can detect the miraculous in any situation, antennae that register the incomprehensible mystery of the fact that this world is here, and that we are here. Because those antennae have atrophied through generations of dulling-down in our mechanistic world view and rampant capitalism.
The refined perception and knowledge of any given biotope seems to me to be a condition for the survival of any organism in that biotope. Ecology is the study of the relationship between an organism and its environment, and that relationship is always reciprocal. A relationship in which both the organism and the environment flourish will be the most sustainable and will last the longest. A forest may be an excellent example: just about all organisms in a forest are perfectly attuned to each other and promote each other's survival and flourishing. A complex ecosystem like a forest, in which everything is perfectly attuned, can exist for millennia and evolve to ever greater splendor and dynamic harmony. And just about all organisms in a forest have particularly refined methods of observation and perception of their environment, something that continues to present scientists with ever more surprising and amazing discoveries. And where people still live in a harmonious relationship with those forests and woodlands, as in some parts of the Amazon, you will invariably find that these peoples have also developed a very precise and refined perception of their environment, which enables them to take their place in these ecosystems in ways that not only protect them from damage, but even help them to flourish even more. And the refined perception of the environment is also an expression of these people's love for their surroundings, which they do not even consider as 'surroundings', but as an extension of themselves, of their own being.
We live in a time in which the inhabitants of the industrialized world have largely lost touch with and perception of the natural world. I myself am no exception to this. I am a city boy who is trying to ‘better’ his life and is searching for the way back to his origins and his true home. I still have a long way to go.
This lack of attention means we do not realize how close to collapse the natural habitats we are part of and depend on are . Our perception is not only much less refined than that of the Inuit, it is just about dying, just like our habitat. According to Swiss Re, the largest reinsurer on the planet, no less than one-fifth of all countries worldwide are already perilously close to an ecosystem collapse in the near future. Which is something we do not really perceive as such at the moment. For many people, all is well: the extinction of some 200 species of plants, insects and animals per day is not so easy to perceive in our everyday lives. The dying of the microbiome in our soil is not visible to the naked eye. The microplastics that are already massively present in our brains, in testicles, in placentas and unborn babies, remain imperceptible to the naked eye. The silence of the absence of insects, 80 to 90 percent of which have already disappeared, is easy to ignore if you are not paying attention. But I suspect that someone with a more practiced perception of the natural world, one of our ancestors from a few centuries ago for example, if transported with a time machine to what here still passes for 'forests' and 'nature', would immediately notice that life here and now is in an endless state of agony. I suspect that such a person would almost immediately sense the immense suffering of the natural world with all their senses and their entire being. But for us, that suffering is hardly visible, tangible or audible. We generally do not pay enough attention, and our senses have atrophied from disuse. But like for the Inuit, a refined perception of what is going on in our natural environment could well be of vital importance to our survival.
We as a species will not survive if we do not develop a much more intimate relationship with our biotope, our biosphere. All our technology, our economic growth, our attempts at control and dominance, it will all prove futile and laughable if we do not re-tune ourselves to the subtleties of our relationship with our environment, with the natural world of which we are a part and an expression.
Yes, I think it is very wise, healthy and appropriate for all of us to start listening much more to silence. For starters. If we could just take the time to observe silence in such a way that we notice some differences every day, if we could 'pay attention' every day, the 'return' could be invaluable. The gain could possibly consist of also starting to notice a whole lot of other, different things that are now drowning in the hustle and bustle of our stressed lives, constantly rushing to meet the next deadline. Notice how the word 'dead’ is at the core of the word 'deadline'. A dead line, literally. Those who reach the line are often already dead in a sense, because they have barely lived on their way to that deadline, deaf and blind to life and to everything that can reveal itself in paying attention to things like silence. And in our inattentive haste, we miss many signs that we are heading for a real dead-line, a line that promises to make life virtually impossible for us and for countless species with which we share the planet.
Attention is like a muscle: the more we use it, the stronger it will become. And the widening panorama of perception that can result from intensive attention to something like silence may literally help us heal from the blindness we are currently falling victim to, a blindness that is causing us to race full steam ahead, Titanic-like, towards the iceberg or the abyss (or the dead-line). Just as the Inuit are intimately familiar with snow and ice, we could familiarize ourselves with the nuances of silence. So that we not only train and strengthen our perception like a muscle, but shift it to a different kind of focus. So that we enable our perception to pick up information that we now invariably miss, even though we will desperately need it in the transitions that await us.
We are facing massive challenges and overwhelming crises, but neither panicking nor looking away will help us deal with them. Our best hope lies in facing what is coming our way with great attention and focus, with all our senses on high alert and all our abilities to think, feel, perceive and act ready and willing to do what is necessary. Our survival could well depend on it. Snow, ice, silence... yes, but also much more: the whole living world demands all our attention and all our senses. Anything less will not suffice.
Now that you have reached the end of this musing, I would like to thank you for reading (or listening to) this text. I always find it special when someone accompanies me in my musings and meditations, and I greatly appreciate that you have taken the time and attention to read or listen to this and other texts.
Keeping the subject of this musing in mind, I would like to conclude with the following:
May I ask you to pay some attention to the sounds that surround you, right now?
If you are sitting down, could you bring your attention to the feeling of your feet on the ground, the surface of the chair, your head? How does your body feel, and your energy, at this moment?
And if you now let your attention wander to your surroundings and the sounds in them, what do you notice? Can you keep your attention on what is there for a while, whether that is silence or some other sound?
And if there is silence around you at the moment, how does that silence feel? Could you give it a name? And is the silence pleasant?
Thank you for reading and listening, and until the next episode,
All the best to you,
Filip
