Silence

When I was in Prep school, elementary school to those educated here, we learnt a song with this chorus…

Silence is the silver thread of vibrant expectation,
Silence is the absence of a longed for visitation,
Silence is the feeling of a breathing all around you,
Silence is the loneliest of sounds,
Silence is the loneliest of sounds.

Poignant isn’t it! I don’t know the title of the song and as I think of it, I probably learnt it because I loved its poetic resonance, even then I had a love of the written word, it wasn’t taught to me either rather to the school choir for a Christmas play but I remember it touched me then as it does now…and I think I was about nine or ten years old at the time – but I digress.

Silence in today’s cacophony of whirring computers, cellphones and the internet has come to mean something totally different to what it meant to our grandparents or even us when we were younger. Today, there is always something running in a dwelling, be it a refrigerator or a microwave oven, leaving me to think that true silence is rare.

Well the other day I think I came as close to witnessing the nothingness of sound as I ever will. Now I’ve been in power outages in this country before, but none were so, well quiet and curiously enough this state of quiet was achieved without an interruption in electricity. You see recently there was a mandated switch to cable reception on a television – either that or get a converter box at a cost as everything is now being broadcast in high definition. But since that transition was made this was the first break in transmission and it was quiet interesting. Think of being placed in a bubble unbeknownst to you. The television did not work, and in some households because all are linked then that meant the internet and the telephone were also down.

People were literally outside looking up wandering what was going on! It was as if they forgot that the radio still worked. I mean, I know some folks get their household music from the cable music channels so you can just imagine. Everyone was just drifting to their windows and looking out kind of dumbstruck. Sure you could hear you fridge run but who wants to?

This leads me to conclude that although silence is wonderfully romantic to sing about; the security of din is far more comforting. Forget all that philosophical mumbo jumbo about if a tree falls in the woods and no-one is around to hear it....We want sound damn it and we want it now!!