The Uses of Silence

I’m working on a new collection of longer form essays and teaching a lot and emailing a whole lot and sometimes I feel like I’m always saying saying saying, all over the Internet, and on the page, and in my head. All of which to say, I haven’t had a lot to say here. My usual opening paragraph of apology.

At the beginning of the year, we started a podcast called United Against Silence, which is an opportunity for to hear from (and gush over) the artists who facilitate for CBAW, and learn about their processes, rituals, and approaches to creativity. The name of the podcast came from the name we gave the collective of brilliant and accomplished artists who facilitate our workshops. In “Notes on Truth-Telling,” an essay that closes my first book, I wrote about the value of refusing silence, and how systems of abuse (even the systems of abuse we maintain inside ourselves) thrive on silence. I was thinking then of violent silences.

But there is another silence, one that presents a huge opportunity to just think deeply, without the pressure of having to say anything, without having to articulate yourself. To just drop inward. And when I’m not saying in all those ways, I really value the opportunity to be silent. To listen to wordless music and look out the window, tongue glued to the roof of your mouth. Our world isn’t tuned for that. Twitter moves so fast, the news moves so fast, there’s such a pressure to know what is happening and quickly shout what we think about it. And the phone rings, the text messages come and come, the emails and the LinkedIn messages, the myriad ways a response is demanded.

So lately, I’ve been asking our guests to answer that question as well. What are the uses of silence?

It’s been such a wonderful gift to me to have these conversations, and I’m glad to be able to share what these brilliant artists have to say about their art. You can hear it on Spotify, iTunes, on CBAW’s website etc etc etc. I’m linking it here on Google.

I’m teaching a tiny bit less, as our team of facilitators is growing and it makes space for me to do some other things (or rather, to do a few less things/maybe drop a few less balls each week). So I’m planning to try to get back in the habit of posting a poem that f*cks me up with some regularity.*

Here’s one such poem, White Noise by Alice Pettway. Read it. The prompt is to write about something you ordered on line in the last month or so. Boil it down to its use to start. For example, I ordered a big bottle of lavender oil for my diffuser last week, so I might write: I ordered relaxation online, to try to change the shallow breath I seem to wake up to, to turn my ordinary house into a place I where I can escape my ordinary life, which lives here between these walls with me every day… Every single time we buy something, we’re trying to solve some problem, even when it’s mundane stuff like detergent. Dig into it. Go for 15 minutes. Share what you write if you like.

*which may mean I’ll be back here in six months apologizing