Silence is not the absence of something….

My daily life is sound punctuated by silence rather than the other way round. My go to habit is to listen rather than revel in quietness; surround my self in busyness. I observe most of us do not understand or desire silence. It can feel intimidating, empty, wasteful. However there is a beauty in quiet. Quiet forces us to listen and meditate. Appreciate or recoil. The point is, quiet, silence, is not devoid of emotion. It is quite the opposite.

‘Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything’.

Gordon Hempton (Acoustic ecologist)

It’s a thought provoking quote. From The Marginalian website I discovered this, ‘Rodin famously claimed that his sculpting process was all about removing the stone that wasn’t part of the sculpture, and Louis Armstrong maintained that the important notes were the ones he didn’t play’.

What isn’t present can be as germane as what is.

Silence isn’t only significant from a philosophical viewpoint but it can be salient to the practicalities of our day to day. For example in our ability to observe if we are free from danger, to take in more of our physical surroundings and to give us space to confront our internal disposition. But I can hear you say, this is all very well, but it’s quite abstract. For a start, we appear to appreciate how our brain distinguishes sound, but how does it detect we are in silence; detect what isn’t there?

The sound waves of the noise that surrounds us cause vibrations as they travel through the ear. Hair cells in the cochlea (inner ear) convert these vibrations into electrical signals which proceed to the brain via the auditory nerve to be interpreted. The latest research indicates silence is also an acoustic input like noise. Our brains are able to identify silence via particular neurons which fire up when sound is not present. These neurons are seen to be especially active when we move from noise to sudden silence. However this does not seem a compelling explanation; we can’t elucidate how during periods of silence, neurological processes beaver away to provide information in the same way sound accomplishes.

But perhaps there is a further explanation. That although I have waxed lyrical about silence, it doesn’t actually exist. For most people. Today on Earth.

Now bear with me.

When I mention ‘most people’ I’m not well studied enough to understand how completely deaf people experience the world and what sound and silence means to them.

And today on Earth? Research suggests the explosion of the Big Bang was silent because in that instant, there was no medium through which sound waves could travel. I say instance, but the science indicates it took another 400,000 years for sound to be borne as it was in need of matter to reverberate off. I had thought Black holes entertained silence however a recent radio programme seemed to suggest gravitational waves throw off sound even in vacuums….The point is, silence as the absolute absence of sound, today, on Earth? The closest we have come to such silence are in man-made Anechoic chambers. These are designed to test audio equipment and are required to keep out noise and hold the silence. But placing a human in these chambers elicits strange reactions.

In the absence of external stimuli, our brains can go into overdrive and expose previously camouflaged sounds. Perhaps at the extreme, our beating heart or the rhythm of our breath. Furthermore when we are in quiet, our brains can produce illusions of sound because our auditory cortex remains active even if our other senses are muted. It retrieves from memory and floods our brains with music, words, sensations. Not all of it coherent or relevant to the moment at hand. In fact I read in Wired magazine in quiet, ‘We’d all be constantly hallucinating were it not for the grounding input we receive from our other senses’.

As I cogitate on what I have written, there emerges a nuance to how I have described being in the presence of quiet. It is a broader disposition than I have surmised and not just reflective of the absence of sound. It encompasses stillness and a softness. It can persuade our minds to meander either via tempered senses or through a hyper-vigilant lens. I’ve also found in certain moments it coaxes me into a focus on the present; championing a conscious almost devoid of any mediation. Feeling contented in those states for most of us is a practice that does not come easily if we are not secure in who we are or with our inner most reflections. I would not say I am at ease with myself but curiously have come to crave these periods of quiet….

So if someone suggests quiet or silence is dull, remember what you have read. Silence is not absence or devoid of emotion. It’s quite the opposite…..