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In my experience - and I 'sit' in silence about an hour a day - I can say one thing. If I become clear enough - which is to say, if all the little movies, thoughts, fantasies, apprehensions, yes, the burps and gurgles, etc. get cleared off 'the windshield' - in fact, once "the windshield" dissolves and the genuine largeness of the uni- or multi-verse - becomes present, there is always the presence of a sound, one that is unidentifiable in source - muffled ocean waves? - So it is not silence, but as if being in the presence of a or The place of origins. I find it a nice place to go, to be among, or with - a recipient. At its best, both a relief (from the anxiety of my own mental host of local tedium) and an energy charge. Maybe foremost, a gift of humility for these relatively small, usually quite egocentric things we call ourselves. But somehow that gift makes the local stuff much more possible to live and work among. Stephen V http://stephenvincent.net/blog/ > 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 >>> ================ >>> [log in to unmask] >>> [log in to unmask] >>> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard >>> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com >>> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com >>> >>> >>> >> 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 >> Išve got it >> Too. >> >> Sharon Thesen >> > > Hal "We are the zanies of sorrow." > --Oscar Wilde > > Halvard Johnson > ================ > [log in to unmask] > [log in to unmask] > http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard > http://entropyandme.blogspot.com > http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com