Collective silence

Dear Readers,

This is my third essay in as many weeks. The words seem to be flowing more easily now, and the months when they were stifled are becoming nothing more than a distant memory. Reading the Substack newsletters of other writers/artists helps spark conversations in my head. To those of you who write, please know how much your newsletters inspire me. Ideas piggyback off your posts. Manuela Thames’ recent post about curiosity in other people and their stories/experiences as being something missing more and more from our self-absorbed society spurred me to think about something that I find is becoming scarce as well. I’m speaking of silence.

The world is getting noisier. I’m not just talking about volume, but about quantity and content. Everything makes noise— from the television to the radio, to the conversations people on the street have with their telephone on speaker, to the airplanes and cars that pass over and through my town, to posts on social media which have become louder and louder. I’ve heard that even birds are singing more loudly in an attempt to be heard over the din of modern human life. Not that I mind bird song, however! I’ve become acutely aware that there are fewer and fewer things that remain silent and are to be appreciated quietly. Thank god for books and still images.

My brain craves quiet. Most days, after my husband has left the house, and I’m home alone, I savor silence. Rarely, I will put on music or listen to a podcast, but most often, I just immerse myself in a noiseless void while I’m painting, writing, cooking, day dreaming, meditating, etc. Silence calms my nervous system. It gives me space to take full breaths and to let them out slowly. It gives me permission to close my eyes, to check in with my interior, to notice what comes through my other senses. I’ve developed a theory after years of observation as a student of the human condition, and I’ve noticed that people who are not comfortable with silence are essentially running from themselves. They don’t want to know what the voice in their head has to tell them. They don’t want to know what their senses have to teach them. They don’t want to know which memories surface when there are no distractions. They don’t want to feel. And so, they continue to feed the noise machine, putting nickels in the nickelodeon, and the stimuli keep assaulting their nervous systems. Noise is a kind of drug that numbs some people. They crave it when nothing else is going on. I wonder how they sleep.

Individual silence is a part of my daily life, as I mentioned. I use it as a sort of medicine. But the other day, while I was leading my wellness workshop, we had an experience of an entirely different sort— collective silence.

In the hour and a half that we spend together every other Friday; the sessions are loosely structured. Everyone gets something to drink and gets settled into her chair. There’s light chatter at the beginning as we wait for all members to arrive. I introduce the activity for the day and start passing out materials. Oftentimes, members of the group help distribute paper, paint brushes, paper towels, little pots of water. I show examples of what we’ll be making and give a demonstration if necessary. They choose their materials, their color palette, and start making.

Last Friday, our exercise was to make loosely organic, abstract botanicals, using watercolor paint and black fine liners. I showed them how to do a color degradation with two different sized brushes. They took their pencils in hand and started drawing circles on the paper. Normally at that point in the session, I’d put on some soothing music (we often listen to Melody Gardot), and they chat a bit as they create. This time, however, the bluetooth speaker that we use wasn’t in the room, and so I just let the silence be. Everyone became so immersed in what she was creating, no one even talked. Half an hour passed, and everyone continued to work quietly. I watched them from time to time, gazing up from my own work that I was creating, and I saw them completely entrenched in making. All that mattered at that moment was putting wetting the paint, applying the brush to the paper, choosing another color, analyzing which color to place next to the last one. Another 15 minutes passed. They were in complete harmony with the process, as if in a state of meditation. At the end of the session, we talked about the lack of music and chatter, and how everyone was so into the making that they didn’t even feel that something else was lacking. I noted that shared silence, collective, intentional silence, is quite a rare thing. It’s the opposite of silence that exists when we feel alone. Share silence is shared peace. I imagined that our heart beats synchronized. Our cortisol levels probably did too. We shared something so simple and so rare. We all left the session feeling great.

I’m in awe of that experience. Something magical transpired between us. In world that so filled with noise, silence is truly golden.

There are, of course, different types of silence that can occur when we are with other people. There is the silence of unspoken grief and anger. The silence of buried memories. The silence of wounds being reopened. The silence of fear. Many things force us to hold our tongues. There’s also silence that comes from knowing not to speak out of anger, to avoid saying something we might regret. Sometimes there’s wisdom in silence. And yet the silence we shared last Friday was another kind of animal, one that nourished us and protected us and allowed each person to fully express herself in a language that goes beyond words.

I consider that session to have been a gift. The only other times I’ve experienced something similar was during group meditations, but in those situations, silence was a given. In our session last week, it was spontaneous and even more beautiful and precious because of that.

And since this happened while working with watercolor paints, I thought I’d share a recent watercolor of my own with you. After I completed the painting, it reminded me of that experience of my wellness group. So many layers like different voices, different personalities, different experiences, different perceptions, some receding into the background, some advancing and then stepping back, some leaving space for others to rise and take their place.

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I’ll leave you with a few questions for you to contemplate, Dear Reader.

What is your relationship with silence? Do you have enough of it in your life? Do you have too much? Has this changed over time?

What does silence feel like in your body? Where do you hold it? What colors, shapes, forms do you associate with it?

What has silence taught you? What has it whispered in your ear?

Who are the people with whom you can share silent moments in a comfortable, easy way?

Have you experienced collective, shared silence? What was this like and what was the context around it?

Who are you when the world around you is silent?

Thanks, as always, for being here. I so appreciate you!

Until next time,

Anne