The Sound of Silence

Music is the silences between the notes.

                                                 - - - Claude Debussy

I was in my car the other day, listening to a book on Audible, “The Magus,” a classic by bestselling author John Fowles. My attention was distracted a few times by road work or people crossing the street in front of me with their heads in their phones, but I got riveted when I heard the narrator read a description that astounded me in its originality and impact. The sentiment really spoke to me. It went something like this:

“The noise was so loud and disruptive, when it stopped, it felt like like an explosion into silence.”

I rewound the recording and listened to it again. When I got home, the words kept repeating in my mind. “An explosion into silence.” What a powerful way to talk about something that seems so indescribable. I wondered if borrowing those three words to use in my writing would be considered plagiarism. I wasn’t sure, I’m still not, but that’s not the point here. What matters is how important reading is for any writer. Moved by John Fowles, I began to rewrite something I had been working on that morning. I paused to listen and I became aware of the silences between the words and the quiet moments when I was waiting to move to a new paragraph. I’d had the same experience when I was listening to “The Lighthouse,” by Virginia Wolff. As she laid out a pattern for a new way to approach my craft, her excellence was inspiring me to take my own work to a deeper level.

We can use other people’s work as inspiration or discouragement. A writer friend of mine was inconsolable after he read the highly lauded William Styron novel, Sophie’s Choice. The story line was so wrenching, the characters, the dialogue and the politics so authentic, he was too intimidated to sit at his computer. He felt like it was a waste of time to even try. When I encouraged him to use that book for inspiration and give it a go, he said, “Why bother? Styron just did it perfectly. What’s left to say? The last thing the world needs is one more bad book cluttering the marketplace.”

My friend judged himself so harshly, there was no way he could turn around his feelings of inferiority. He had given himself over to the inner critic at such a level, he had walked himself into a stunning paralysis that we call “writer’s block.” He had denied himself the opportunity to utilize something wonderful, a book he admired, to inspire and catapult him into the next phase of his own expression. He was comparing his abilities to someone else’s and he believed that he came up short.

In the words of Mr. Styron himself, “Reading – the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.” I so agree. I always wanted to be able to read. When I was five, I remember sitting cross-legged on the green and beige shag carpeting in our living room, scribbling in my Cinderella coloring book. My parents were reading the newspaper, my sister was writing a book report and I felt like the odd one out. When I finally learned to read in the first grade, I was elated to have access to the adventures that were hidden in the pages. I read voraciously, mostly fiction and although these days, I mostly write non-fiction, a good novel is a gateway into the imagination of a fellow traveler who sees things in a different way than I do. Reading is like walking in someone else’s shoes. It’s as if I’m having a conversation with the author.

When I teach my Zoom classes, I lead my students in a short mediation where they follow their breath and become quiet. It can be challenging to be silent and hear nothing but your own thoughts but when you take a step deeper, there is another world behind those thoughts, a way to stay open and let creativity comes shining through. Last weekend, after we had meditated, I told my students, “If you want to improve your writing, you have to keep on doing it but you also have to read. You need to immerse yourself in someone else’s words and descriptions until your mind begins putting your own words in different sequences.” I was inviting them to find the quiet place inside them and write from there.

We all have unique methods and conditions that pave the way for us to express ourselves. Some people like working in the nighttime. I like mornings. Some people like to take their computers to Starbuck’s. I need complete silence. I avoid any music or sounds that can take me for a ride. I want to ride on my own words, follow them wherever they lead me and watch new worlds open up.  

Dr. Seuss said quite simply,

“The more that you read, the more things you’ll know,

The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

I believe that I was born to read and to write, activities that will be there for me no matter how old I am and where I am. The silence “that explodes” into the background when I write overrides outside noises like garbage trucks and helicopters. It is in these silences that my creativity peeks its head out and leads me in a dance as the words skim along the page. Award winning photographer, Ansel Adams, said, “When images  become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”