“In the beginning was the word,” says John’s gospel. Before that, there was silence. Not nothing, simply silence. I suppose “silence” defined would be “the absence of sound,” but silence speaks in its own way. There are multiple ways of speaking without voice.
Most meditation practices involve insulating yourself from the sounds that are out there and making yourself deaf so that you can really hear. Peggy Noonan wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that John Krasinski’s new film, “A Quiet Place,” just released, is essentially a silent film. The aliens in this story are blind cannibals who will find you and eat you if you make the slightest noise. Ms Noonan says the film is awesome because it goes against today’s prevailing film style of making great amounts of continuous noise in order to communicate importance. I came close to walking out of the last superman movie because it was just a long series of noisy and flashy animation. Think virtual reality stuff of people blowing up and cars careening into one another. Very LOUD. NOISY.
When “talkies” came along they only made the silent spaces in films even more dramatic. In Kubrick’s “A Space Odyssey”, the first line of dialogue doesn’t come until twenty-five minutes into the film. The music by Gyorgy Ligeti, carries the film along with no dialogue at all. Need I mention, Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie?
Years ago I wrote to Lillian Gish, a silent film star of huge reputation, and she wrote back to me about what she was doing and how she felt about silent films. In the first place, Ms Gish says, those movies were never meant to be silent, music accompanied the visuals. Sometimes it was orchestral music, other times it was a house organ or piano.
It was music as the “universal” language not speech which she felt made the films what they were in her day.
Hearing Al Jolson’s singing in “The Jazz Singer” — the first talkie blockbuster– wasn’t what wowed the audiences, it was the sound of forks and knives striking dishes in the cabaret scene that made the movies so real.
In life, especially in prayer, you have to have quiet inside and out. That’s why the first movement of prayer has to recollection. If you are listening to the TV or to some e-tune blaring through your headset, you are not listening for God. You have to quiet your heart and then find an inner room where you can listen for a word.
“It is my hope that great silent films with great music (will be produced again). These two once changed the world….” Lillian Gish. (author’s collection).