Friday, February 25, 2011
John Zerzen on silence.
Silence reaches back to presence and original community, before the symbolic compromised both silence and presence. It predates what Levinas called "the unity of representation," that always works to silence the silence and replace it with the homelessness of symbolic structures. The Latin root for silence, silere, to say nothing, is related to sinere, to allow to be in a place. We are drawn to those places where language falls most often, and most crucially, silent. The later Heidegger appreciated the realm of silence, as did Holderlin, one of Heidegger's important reference points, especially in his Late Hymns. The insatiable longing that Holderlin expressed so powerfully related not only to an original, silent wholeness, but also to his growing comprehension that language must always admit its origin in loss.¶ 9:45 AM
A century and a half later, Samuel Beckett made use of silence as an alternative to language. In Krapp's Last Tape and elsewhere, the idea that all language is an excess of language is strongly on offer. Beckett complains that "in the forest of symbols" there is never quiet, and longs to break through the veil of language to silence. Northrup Frye found the purpose of Beckett's work "to lie in nothing other than the restoration of silence."
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Maybe it's my prevailing sophomoric rebellion against Romanticism (whose hold on me is permanent), but I do not see silence, per se, with an exclusive privilege. The rhythms of sound and silence, to be sure. That pervades my sense of the whole of things. If I had ears to hear, I expect there would be sounds for me even in the farthest reaches of space-time.
Death is not silence, insofar as silence mutually implicates sound. Silence as a useful dramatic symbol arouses my thymos (as passion, not as rage, although I don't know if that is accurate, Greekwise; but I live at the vortex of 3 major air corridors). And where would logos be without mythos? (Yes, I know: inventing cures for cancer along with atomic weapons.)
Death is not silence, insofar as silence mutually implicates sound. Silence as a useful dramatic symbol arouses my thymos (as passion, not as rage, although I don't know if that is accurate, Greekwise; but I live at the vortex of 3 major air corridors). And where would logos be without mythos? (Yes, I know: inventing cures for cancer along with atomic weapons.)
Noize--verbal, musickal, industrial--moves product.
The meditative silence--either catholic or zen, or philosophastical perhaps--does have a therapeutic effect, perhaps. At least for those who can afford it. Some of us don't have the coastside rock garden, aka celebrity Zen-Co, and must endure Oprah, traffic, LAX, or loud free jazz, the voices dying with a dying fall in the next room.
Beckett did put his shoulder to the wheel, smashed in the Schackespearean chattering, perhaps. Godot also makes a great use of silence. His later minimalist works ....an acquired taste, IMHE. Whats the one with the four actors silently walking around the square? Sort of a...dance, really.
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The meditative silence--either catholic or zen, or philosophastical perhaps--does have a therapeutic effect, perhaps. At least for those who can afford it. Some of us don't have the coastside rock garden, aka celebrity Zen-Co, and must endure Oprah, traffic, LAX, or loud free jazz, the voices dying with a dying fall in the next room.
Beckett did put his shoulder to the wheel, smashed in the Schackespearean chattering, perhaps. Godot also makes a great use of silence. His later minimalist works ....an acquired taste, IMHE. Whats the one with the four actors silently walking around the square? Sort of a...dance, really.
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