I'm not exactly sure what to explain, but even sensory-deprivation tanks
don't even provide real (i.e., complete) silence, as John C. Lilly
found. If
one doesn't hear sounds from without, one hears sounds from within:
the heart, the central nervous system, the blood rushing through the
circulatory system, etc. No speaking doesn't equal silence. But I know
what you mean, Doug. Those uncomfortable silences take getting used
to. When I was teaching, though, I found myself able to maintain silence
(my own) until students in discussion classes were so uncomfortable
they actually found they had something to say.
I imagine that some deaf folks actually "hear" silence even though they
can "speak" and be "spoken" by sign, gesture, etc.
Hal
On Nov 26, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Douglas Barbour wrote:
> Can you explain further, Hal? Because the audience perhaps shuffled
> etc? The silence (whether real or not) was imposed by the artists,
> & I certainly felt the impress of it, even if around me there may
> have been little noises made by said audience in its discomfort.
> But no speaking.
>
> Stephen Scobie & I tried something similar in one of our pieces,
> though only for up to 30 seconds, & we felt the pressure to speak
> too....
>
> Doug
> On 26-Nov-05, at 9:24 AM, Halvard Johnson wrote:
>
>
>> On Nov 26, 2005, at 11:11 AM, Douglas Barbour wrote:
>>
>>
>>> To get back to Cage, when I heard him 'read' from one of his read-
>>> throughs, one of he baffles he had set up was that a certain
>>> throw of the dice required silence for the time it took his
>>> second had to reach the minute. So from one to 59 seconds of
>>> silence as a large room full of people waited for the next word.
>>> Boy, some of those silences FELT really long.
>>>
>>> Doug
>>>
>>
>> Ah, but none of them were real silences.
>>
>> Hal "Music is continuous. Only listening
>> is intermittent."
>> --Henry David Thoreau
>>
>> Halvard Johnson
>> ================
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>>
>>
>>
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
>
> Shakespeare
> Drag yr mouldy old bones
> Up these stairs & tell me
> What you died of,
> I think
> I’ve got it
> Too.
>
> Sharon Thesen
>
Hal "We are the zanies of sorrow."
--Oscar Wilde
Halvard Johnson
================
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