on silence

since our class my mind keeps looping back to the conversation on silence. involuntarily so. a la a song worm, so perhaps the blame on the following splatter of unfiltered thought should be placed on my neurons and not on my conscious person. but i agree with julia. that silence is impossible for us humans. i remember reading once that even when we read, the tongue, the throat, it moves. the muscles undulate just as they do when we speak aloud; there is no difference. and always, the scientists say, there is noise, even if it is beyond our decibel range of hearing. even in space, there is noise. there is sound. so then what is it we attempt to achieve when we attempt to offset the noise, the busy, the too much? it is not silence, no. not only because it is impossible to achieve, but because it is too austere. silence is the ultimate death, and we (for the most part?) do not attempt to achieve death. no, rather it is quiet. calm. peace. and these things -- quiet, peace, calm -- these are very different from silence. it is not a difference in semantics. it is wholly emotionally, spiritually, physically and biologically different. atoms still move, our brains still function, our breath still in- and exhaled. there is still sound, but it is peaceful, it is calm, it is quiet. therefore the question of silence and noise -- unless one is a nihilist in the purest and truest sense of the word -- is not the question to consider. the question of "how to achieve silence" is irrelevant. the question when presented regarding the absence of the bustle, hectic, frantic, is to ask "how does one achieve quiet?" and in response to this, well, i do not exactly have an answer. no no. simply put. i do not have any answer. but i think the attempt to achieve it through any medium, any means, is one that often -- though not always -- leads to the generation of human activity. not just via art, but everything. even if that peace is a brief period, a rest, a point in time and space that inevitably makes us at the same time aware that there is more to seek and understand. the rest is not a resolution, but in fact a lead to the next moment of activity. at the same time, it is not necessarily a reaction/response, an anticipation, or an antecedent. it is its own space in time which allows us to recoup, rethink, re-acclimate, reassess. it does not ask us to move forward, backward, up, down, around. it makes no demands. it simply is. WE decide what to do next. WE who, in these periods of inertia, decide on our next move, to build and push our momentum to the next point. and no, there is no silence in that. it can also be difficult to endure, stressful -- but that does not come from quiet, it comes from us and what we choose to allow into the quiet. or not allow into it. it is permission to create our own space/time. it is the transference of responsibility on our individual selves to recreate space/time. and there is plenty of sound, music, noise, energy, movement in that. but it is different from more ostentatious, practical, explicable ways of moving in space and time. it is connected, but at the same time different and in a category of its own. and so it is "quiet" rather than silence, that we create or attempt to create at times in our work, in our lives. how ironic. the amount of noise/energy necessary for creating quiet. pathetic? funny? both? a "wah-ha" if you will?

just some thoughts... what are yours?

p.s. this is kyoung. i am listed as "xyz" because that's what i called my account when first setting up the blog. i didn't know that i wouldn't be allowed to change my id until post-facto. so sorry if the "posted by" confuses!

p.p.s. in response to pouya's post on "left, right" thinking, check out jill bolte taylor's ted conference presentation called "stroke of insight". powerful. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html