…the Rest Is Silence

One of the most sublime moments in art is silence. It’s rare, to articulate open space while at the same time filling it; how do you push a narrative forward while standing absolutely still?

It’s a matter of timing, really. And of restraint. Art that cares for slowness feels like the intake of breath.

Sometimes, it is literally just that. One of the most memorable, iconic American punch-lines of all time was in a Jack Benny radio broadcast from the 40’s, when a thug corners Jack, a notorious skinflint, in a dark alley on his walk home. The thug says, “

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” and you hear nothing but the shifting of the studio audience until they erupt in laughter. He says it again. “Look bud, I said your money or your life!” Jack finally responds, unslaked and gruff, as if rudely interrupted mid-thought: “I’m thinking it over!”  To risk playing with silence inside a joke is also to risk being received by it, so not many people dare.

Sometimes silence is more understated. Comedy is easier, it gives a nod to its own anxiety, but not everything does. Hardly anybody seems to believe they have the patience for it, not in what they create or take in, but I think it just takes a minute to readjust. Sit and be slow with something. I think of silence as kind of this admission of failure; what can communicate the whole of this thing? For me, great art does not feel the need to or that it even can. It doesn’t want to micro-manage the imagination. Space, a silence where you may pour yourself inside a work ,unfolds for not just the actor, but the witness. It transcends ego. It becomes something you share. “Poor tools require better skills.”

I mean, how many stories can you really tell?

my sweet old etcetera, e.e. cummings

my sweet old etcetera
aunt lucy during the recent

war could and what
is more did tell you just
what everybody was fighting

for,
my sister

Isabel created hundreds
(and
hundreds)of socks not to
mention fleaproof earwarmers
etcetera wristers etcetera, my
mother hoped that

i would die etcetera
bravely of course my father used
to become hoarse talking about how it was
a privilege and if only he
could meanwhile my

self etcetera lay quietly
in the deep mud et

cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)

Download: Luciano Berio, Dieter Mack & George Crumb’s Music For a Summer Evening