it is amazing how important silence is. there are many kinds of silence: awkward, pregnant, romantic, anticipatory, suspenseful, when you are alone, in a crowded room. my favorite is with one other person. not awkward, but satisfying. post coital. or the moment right before you wake up, alone or with someone. when you are both waking up and alternately looking at each other to try and catch them when they wake. we tend so often to think that we have to fill every moment with sound. when having a conversation, most people are just waiting for their turn to talk. we rarely listen to each other anymore.
i recently spent a morning in bed, just listening to the silence. falling in an out of sleep, and feeling my surroundings. the morning light casting a beam across the floor. its amazing how much more heightened your senses become if you aren't trying to fill the space with sound. i could feel the warmth of the body next to me, see him breathing. taking speech out of the equation opens up all of the other sounds we forget too. i could hear the dog in the living room, sniffing. its a lot like meditation or yoga. you become aware of your body. aware of the space you take up, and the sensations that you feel. i could feel my breath and hear his heart beat. the silence of that morning has made me think about taking time to relish in quietness.
the past months have brought a change in the world. our hemisphere is getting ready for sleep, and there seems to be more silence in the winter months. snow is an insulator, and for some reason, the cold sucks the sound as well as the breath out of you. quietly sitting, i listen to the sound of my pencil on the paper, and the brush on the canvas. a wet brush has a much different sound than a dry one. the scratch of the stylus on a board. these are the sounds of my trade. i get lost sounds. so many tiny noises that bring me joy. the sound of knuckles cracking, rain, a zipper, a deep breath or sigh.
sighs are like silence, they can mean so many things. taking a feeling and interpreting it into a visual representation is an amazing thing. how do you show the silence of post-coital bliss? or the sigh just before you say goodbye? sometimes my mind goes faster than my mouth, or my hands. i work hard to capture a moment in my work, but in the end everything is transient and impermanent. feelings are fleeting and change is the only constant. the beauty in art is being able to hold on to that moment and share it with others, to bring them into me for that instant, then let them go. if you could relive a smell, or sound, wouldn't you?
