What is the absence of sound? Perhaps I should clarify and rephrase the question. Let’s try again. What is the opposite of noise? Well, let’s think about this. The seemingly low-hanging fruit in this thought experiment is of course “silence,” correct? As Carlin would suggest
“Try to pay attention to the language that we’ve agreed on.”
What is a sound? Well, what is it not? Is it a noun? No. A sound is the sound of ____. The sound is what is emitted. It depends on what it is describing. So that means it is an adjective, a descriptive word, right? A loud sound. A pleasant sound. It can be an adverb. It sounds amazing. The subject, the noun, is “it.” What sounds amazing? Pumpkin Pie? The music?
Let’s go with the music. The music sounds amazing. The verb is hidden in the amazement being experienced by those willing to submit themselves to it. And what is it? The subject. What is the subject? The music! But wait? Is the music even a noun? This “it?” No. It is a happening.
Back to sounds then. We have discussed what a sound can be. What is it not? Neti Neti; not this, not that. It is not a synonym for noise. A noise is always a sound, but as discussed before, a sound is not always a noise. By this measure, a sound is not one thing, but a description of something from the eye of the beholder. In conversation, how would you describe a noisy sound? Well, you likely wouldn’t paint it in a positive light, but you would likely describe it with words and phrases such as: distracting, loud. demanding attention.
Noises infiltrate our ability to perform a task. Noises orient our attention towards something and do so with a rather aggressive bag of tricks. You wouldn’t describe a visit with your poor old grandma as
“Granny’s voice was matched only by the noises that emanated from her old record player… you know the one with the fucked up needle and all the scratched-up 75s? Ah, Burt Bacharach.”
My understanding of this is something closer to this: The opposite of noise is sound, not silence. Silence is not a goal, nor a place or tangible event. Silence is not something that occupies the room when there is no noise. Silence should be better understood not as a noun or as an adjective, but as a verb: to be silencing. The constraints in the syntax governing the English language require a verb - the doing - to have two additional components to make it grammatically correct: the subject - the doer, and the object, the done to. That is to say, the target for which the action is directed by the one who is the thinker of thoughts. And a target for which an action is performed upon requires the intention of the participant at large.
It’s thoughts.
A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts (Alan Watts)
Silence - beautiful, luxurious silence - is the silence of thought. What makes it luxurious is all the “sounds” that are emitted upon silencing thought which fill the ears with harmonious synchronicity. Thoughts, that is to say, our internal chatter, distract us from everything else going on around us. Thoughts do not mean anything. They do not manifest anything. Our thoughts are primarily our reactions to what is happening “outside” of us. Notice the use of language.
So then if we are not reacting to what is going on around us, what then do we do? We respond. But not in the way we may think to understand the word. We don’t respond by moving. We respond by being moved. And what does that look like?
Everything in your perceptual field. All the little happenings, so many of them unaware of the other. Ants moving along blades of grass, blades of grass moving to and fro with the wind. The grains in the wood snake around the tree like a winding creek, finding the lowest places. And as you see each little seemingly independent happening, that space the chatter used to occupy yields to a voice that does not speak; for divinity cannot be found in words alone but through good works. So you experience the voice and it shows you its familiarity:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F17d31c8b-1994-4465-8555-7711393aa8de_640x480.jpeg)
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![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F377343e3-ab42-48a6-bebe-08f847c085e4_640x480.jpeg)
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And like that kid’s song about the watch, the brain begins to find and map patterns in the information. And it does.
….the hipbone’s connected to the thighbone…
…the thighbones connected to the wristwatch… whoops…
You are patterning now... and it’s an active process that you are not merely the passive observer of any longer because as your brain continues to map these connections they will eventually fall back in on themselves, on yourself… I’m not a cartographer, but what is the saying about maps?
All roads lead back to….
Did you notice the fingerprints on the picture of the building? I took that in Thailand standing in front of a temple that was built by hand several hundred years ago. The fingerprints then… were several hundred years old. What do these pictures point to? What do the maps lead to that are found in the quiet places?
Life. Your life. Life beyond your life. Same Same.
And in that way, you have been stolen from. What is it that has been stolen? You’re ability to proceed otherwise. It was there all along. The best hiding places are always in plain sight.