There's another conference coming up in October - in Launceston, Tasmania. Titled Sounding the Earth: Music, Language, Acoustic Ecology it's being orchestrated by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Australia and New Zealand. I'm hoping to be able to contribute a paper and am in the early stages of putting together an outline with a friend over in Oz. Ideally, we'll end up with a collaborative, 'two-voice' presentation-come-sound installation. The subject of sound inevitably brings up questions around silence for me; the spaces between notes being every bit as important as the notes themselves. Arvo Part's glorious music epitomizes this principle.
I've jotted down thoughts on this subject over the years; it's been interesting to dig some of them up. . .
Silence suggests an experience of absence or aloneness, where it can in fact be one of presence and oneness.
Stillness and silence are dynamic. Each suggests a potent space - a way of being that resonates with energy.
Silence contains and emanates all the fullness of sound. Similarly, stillness is anything but static. Each reveals our connectedness with - and separation from - our selves, others, our environment. Each has the potential to expose memory, challenge reality and the imagined, highlight knowledge or ignorance of self and other.
Silence and stillness accompany us through life and death, teaching us patience, protecting innocence, advising discernment, encouraging autonomy whilst nourishing community.
