LET SILENCE BE THE ART YOU PRACTICE - Rumi

It is inescapable, unless one is deaf not to hear. This is not necessarily advantageous: sometimes, it proves expedient to be deaf and be spared the wasteful chattering increasingly consolidated by social media. Exposed to man’s unceasing babbling, it is easily assumed that “humanity must perforce prey on itself, like monsters of the deep.”(William Shakespeare, King Lear, IV.2) Things were not always so, but sometimes things change unnoticed: by the time we notice, it is too late to do anything about it. 

Musing on past times that recall my childhood and beyond, it is striking how much noise has advanced its cause! Softly imposed ‘music’, though sometimes not so softly; its invasive presence is felt everywhere. A disturbing presence that reminds us of Orwell’s insight: “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves” (George Orwell, 1984).  

Like Fama in Ovid’s opus, whose domus contains a chaotic cosmos where words replace elements, it is nearly impossible to escape this hollowness: shopping centres, restaurants, hospitals, and even churches embrace it wholeheartedly! Yes, Orwell’s insight accompanies us because this purported music of blared thoughts prevents us from listening to our hearts. 

We are stuck in an aquarium even as we dream of the open seas beyond. Illusions have replaced reality as truth transmutes into mere appearance, and solitude degenerates into lonesomeness. But we do, after all, live in the age of simulation accompanied by noise that increasingly forms part of our fabric, or so it seems. 

As invasive noise strengthens its presence, am I wrong in thinking that its desideratum conspires to prevent me from thinking? Of course, I may not be thinking at all but merely fancying I am. As people concentrate on their mobiles and nothing else besides, it is unlikely that many are concerned with the quality of their thoughts. Thus, Duke Vincenzo’s insight clamours still, like lost distant thundering: “Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm.” (William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, IV, 1.14) 

As ghostly paling shadows increasingly resemble each other, this ‘good provoke to harm’ might prove more chilling than one might imagine. Glancing, things do not get better: people resembling lonely stripped poplars in the death of winter, isolated by their mobiles, appear mistily. They seem unconscious of what surrounds them, but this might be intended. And so, one’s neighbour is the person standing beside you at a bus stop or by the cash register in a supermarket, which you neither know nor wish to know.   

With COVID-19, half-hidden faces remind me of endured breathless desert storms that swept through as we sought to keep our nostrils unsoiled. But now these are, or at least so appear, permanent: smile-less faces! Luckily, the eyes do not lie. If in doubt, learn to read dogs’ eyes that silently communicate their hearts: so doing, we understand our own, which reminds me of Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, where hearts switched. 

Worst still, a common sight to encounter people roaming wearing headphones that somehow recall Banquo’s ghost in Macbeth: they too appear perversely comic (William Shakespeare, Macbeth III.4). What underlines all this is an imposed individualism now mistaken for a promoted ideal. Monotony is commonplace, but perhaps this dullness reflects our hollowness. 

Paradoxically, though besieged by messages offering Dante's ‘Paradiso’ in a cosmos burdened by mass communications, people are lonelier. This should not surprise us because the idea that we converse is but an illusion.  People wackily neither notice nor wish to understand as the deception deepens. We thus talk unceasingly and often unnecessarily. We presume that others want to listen: no one cares. We are transformed into disillusioned preachers who babble on even as gentle Hypnos extends its soporific presence beyond the pulpit. Epictetus’s advice illumines: “Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly”. 

Martin


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