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10/12/2004 Archived Entry: "Silence"

Started reading David Toop's Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory. Toop explores the music we never really hear (like his book on ambient music). He collects thoughts and ideas from a variety of folks and events centered on silence.
The reoccurring theme (so far) seems to be Cage's demonstration that even silence is not silence. Pedagogically (of course, pedagogy, right?) I'm reminded of the kinds of non-silence and silent spaces which take place in disciplinary venues like listservs. Flame wars - the ultimate effort to silence. Mark Dery celebrated the flame wars in a nice piece he did awhile back. But the dissent/the wait-a-minute/the Lee Corso "Not so fast, my friend" responses on listservs to various threads quickly invite silence ("did you hear something?" "Nope."). Collin once noted how he felt that he silenced WPA-L with a comment. It feels that way at times when a devil's advocate like me shouts out and hears....silence. When you disagree with the status quo, silence responds. Don’t rock the boat, baby.
And there’s weblog silence. No post silence. No visit silence. No links out or in silence. Or even among the most popular of blogs, the boredom, the repetition of the same comments (debates? So and so is dead…). It’s still silence. If you say the same thing the same thing the same thing…ain’t that silence? Toop wants to use the Japanese term Ma to describe the shapelessness of silence…but it feels like it has a shape. Don't nobody bring up "Sounds of Silence."

Posted by John L @ 10/15/2004 04:03 AM EST