Is there a means more vocal than words? Can silence fill every void that wordlessness creates? I doubt it. There is a reason why we were able to develop speech and use it to communicate with, and not deny ourselves that power by employing silence. Because honestly, if silence were a more powerful, more poignant, more effective way of saying things, even animal sounds would be rendered redundant. Words and letters and syllables and sounds and voices and tones and sentences and strings of symbols that can be read and made sense with, are actually things that matter and count for much more than what a few moments of silence or the abstinence from communication can ever do.
Now this epiphanic outburst, as I like to term this piece, is a result of the combined action of multiple things that have happened in the span of the last 7 hours - I was denied my booking and thus denied from watching Madagascar 3, which led to a failed attempt at driving practice [not a crash, but a lack of volition], combined with watching "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" [watch it, please] and "The Terminal" and just the crazy weather and the idea of it being a Sunday with a whirlwind of a week ahead of me. Now, the movies actually triggered most of it off. Movies where characters couldn't communicate or didn't want to or had chosen to abandon their ability to verbally express in return for a lifetime of silent and inward discovery. Movies where all the characters wanted was to be heard, to be understood, to be spoken to like they were understood, to understand, to process verbal messages, to give voice to their thoughts and to bring out the voices of those who had been put on 'mute' for a really long time. The weather gave more room for gloom and barely any for any kind of sunshine or starlight to peek through, as if a bright idea or a brilliant thought was clouded over by the inability or lack of volition to let it out. The idea of a lull day before a stormy week constricted the spaces within me to even bring myself to say how it made me feel. The silence gnawed at me from within and it was happening to people around me too, except when the time, place, opportunity and words came to express ourselves, there was a wordless void. All we wanted was to scream [at least I did] and yet there was not a squeak we could let out. A simple hug and a shared cup of tea was all we could manage.
Silence is so devastating. I don't remember when this was, but I was in a workshop once and we were all asked to use a word, one by one, to describe silence and what it meant to us. I said, "destructive". Now, my reasons then were different from what they are now. Purely because the rounded mature understanding I have of that word today and how silence destroys in my life, was lacking a couple of years back. A point came, in the course of the time that has just gone by in my life, where I was able to manifest a bit of this tumultuous state I was in and still am in. I could do so by opining about the movies. And I burst. I couldn't hold back on every emotion I was feeling and let it all out - word for word.
I felt a sense of relief and yet a greater sense of confusion that I was unable to make do with body language, a language that goes beyond the spoken word. I felt inadequate in my ability to express, and yet whole in my expression because I had just realised what words meant. Not their dictionary meanings or their implications, but just the use of them. I thought back to Tom Hanks in The Terminal [the first hour of, mind you]. If only he could have made more sense to the people he was surrounded by. If only he had the power of words, the power to question what he was going through. He could speak alright, but not alright enough to be heard or to even be taken notice of. Was there no one who could, even if for a moment, comprehend what he was trying to get across and hopefully give him some relief, instead of making a mockery out of him by showing their helplessness and eye him through a camera, speechless enough to be unable to comfort a man in a pathetic situation? I thought back to The Rentor in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He wouldn't speak out of choice or the effect of a psychological trauma. But were there not more than a moment and a half where he could just bellow out every single thing he had been trying to give voice to for years on end, instead of restricting himself to the use of paper and pen? And I thought back to moments in my life and the moments in other's lives that I have known of or witnessed. Was there no way that there was nothing we had to say when we had the chances, the ability and the need for it? What stopped us then and what stops us now?
I question all of us, as people, today. Does silence do us any good? Because if it does, why is the sound of every key I punch on this keyboard so comforting to me? If it does, why have we graduated from silent movies to talkies? And if it still does, why were we ever meant to speak at all?
Now this epiphanic outburst, as I like to term this piece, is a result of the combined action of multiple things that have happened in the span of the last 7 hours - I was denied my booking and thus denied from watching Madagascar 3, which led to a failed attempt at driving practice [not a crash, but a lack of volition], combined with watching "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close" [watch it, please] and "The Terminal" and just the crazy weather and the idea of it being a Sunday with a whirlwind of a week ahead of me. Now, the movies actually triggered most of it off. Movies where characters couldn't communicate or didn't want to or had chosen to abandon their ability to verbally express in return for a lifetime of silent and inward discovery. Movies where all the characters wanted was to be heard, to be understood, to be spoken to like they were understood, to understand, to process verbal messages, to give voice to their thoughts and to bring out the voices of those who had been put on 'mute' for a really long time. The weather gave more room for gloom and barely any for any kind of sunshine or starlight to peek through, as if a bright idea or a brilliant thought was clouded over by the inability or lack of volition to let it out. The idea of a lull day before a stormy week constricted the spaces within me to even bring myself to say how it made me feel. The silence gnawed at me from within and it was happening to people around me too, except when the time, place, opportunity and words came to express ourselves, there was a wordless void. All we wanted was to scream [at least I did] and yet there was not a squeak we could let out. A simple hug and a shared cup of tea was all we could manage.
Silence is so devastating. I don't remember when this was, but I was in a workshop once and we were all asked to use a word, one by one, to describe silence and what it meant to us. I said, "destructive". Now, my reasons then were different from what they are now. Purely because the rounded mature understanding I have of that word today and how silence destroys in my life, was lacking a couple of years back. A point came, in the course of the time that has just gone by in my life, where I was able to manifest a bit of this tumultuous state I was in and still am in. I could do so by opining about the movies. And I burst. I couldn't hold back on every emotion I was feeling and let it all out - word for word.
I felt a sense of relief and yet a greater sense of confusion that I was unable to make do with body language, a language that goes beyond the spoken word. I felt inadequate in my ability to express, and yet whole in my expression because I had just realised what words meant. Not their dictionary meanings or their implications, but just the use of them. I thought back to Tom Hanks in The Terminal [the first hour of, mind you]. If only he could have made more sense to the people he was surrounded by. If only he had the power of words, the power to question what he was going through. He could speak alright, but not alright enough to be heard or to even be taken notice of. Was there no one who could, even if for a moment, comprehend what he was trying to get across and hopefully give him some relief, instead of making a mockery out of him by showing their helplessness and eye him through a camera, speechless enough to be unable to comfort a man in a pathetic situation? I thought back to The Rentor in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He wouldn't speak out of choice or the effect of a psychological trauma. But were there not more than a moment and a half where he could just bellow out every single thing he had been trying to give voice to for years on end, instead of restricting himself to the use of paper and pen? And I thought back to moments in my life and the moments in other's lives that I have known of or witnessed. Was there no way that there was nothing we had to say when we had the chances, the ability and the need for it? What stopped us then and what stops us now?
I question all of us, as people, today. Does silence do us any good? Because if it does, why is the sound of every key I punch on this keyboard so comforting to me? If it does, why have we graduated from silent movies to talkies? And if it still does, why were we ever meant to speak at all?
