It’s been a long time since I’ve done a non-music or photographs post. But nothing triggered it, I meant to do this one a while ago, it was part of the originally intended ones, or close to anyway. I was hoping to write it earlier in the summer, while there was no gigs and not so much to do. But I never felt quite ready for it psychologically, and didn’t force myself to do it. Before the gig season fully restarts, and at the beginning of two weeks off (at last! only had a few days off here and there over the summer), I feel this quiet morning before going out to watch the Arsenal match is the right time. Anyway, that’s it for useless current context.
The idea of the post was borne out of yet another failure of communication early in 2023. The whole frustration of facing an unwanted (virtual) silence and not knowing any way to break it, not wanting to force anything, but feeling that a lot of issues in life stemmed from a lack of expressing oneself. Sometimes (often) on my side, but I feel more able now, so in this case, more about an incoming silence.
As usual, or more than usual, this post will be a mess. Because I thought I should also expand in other directions. Very often there is the physical reality (silence = no noise) and the psychological one (silence = absence of expression).
I’ll start with the physical because it’s the easiest to deal with. Who doesn’t love when everything is silent, at night or other, when you are on your own? The problem I have is that I have a near-permanent humming/buzzing noise in my head. It doesn’t feel it has a physical ’cause’, although you could argue that with the number of loud concerts, all the music I listen to on my headphones, and, probably as big a factor, the incredibly high level of noise I’ve been exposed to at length in the context of work for a sizeable chunk of my career, might contribute to tinnitus or something. But I genuinely don’t know if that’s the case. My hearing in itself doesn’t seem to be impaired. Sometimes, but it’s extremely rare nowadays, I do reach a few moments (not even seconds?) of silence and it feels so peaceful. Not sure if it’s entirely psychological and due to my overall stress/unsatisfaction. As for the physical external noise, living near the RER tracks means I only get near it in the middle of the night. Anyway, that’s about it, but I’m reminded of the best moments of silence in my life, which were not at all physically silent in fact. Outside in the Pyrénées at night, sometimes watching the stars, either on the telescope with Oncle André), or simply when walking back to the house. There was the noise of nature, all sort of buzzing animals (crickets?), but somehow this is my idea of the most peaceful setting.
Noise affects you more when you are not focussed on whatever you are doing though: some people say the need music to work (I was actually suprised at someone saying they put classical music to work as it’s less disruptive than songs with lyrics, but then why put any music at all?), some people can’t work with music, or with any sort of regular or irregular noise disturbance. Personally, I think it’s down to whatever task you are doing, of course, but also on focus. If highly focused and the noise is not just starting during the thing (and even then that might just be a brief moment), I think even anything very loud can be ignored. And if it’s music, even easier, you’re probably losing the awareness of it completely, unless there’s a bit you really like (which is why classical may not work either, it can be just as involving or more as ‘modern’ rock/folk/country/techno/whatever).
Anyway, yeah, that’s all for the physical noise, everything that was not even initially intended for this piece.
But that’s the thing, for the psychological bit, I felt I really don’t know what to write, and that’s probably one of the reason I procrastinated on this page. Oh sure, as usual, words and meanings will appear as I type, it’s not particularly difficult to let your thoughts flow and put them down on paper….I mean screen.
So……….how do I get about it? Childhood memories again? Or characterisation. Silence can be shared and peaceful, between two people or more. The silence of understanding, the silence of compassion, the silence of moral support (it doesn’t always needs words, even though at times I still feel slightly envious of people who are able to spontaneously offer worded comfort, I think I can do it now, but it’s rarely come naturally to me, though I’ve learnt, maybe in a way to copy the words, even if the feeling was always there in me – think I’ve touched on that in another page: even when I’m not factually spontaneous, I still always try to express when I actually feel, or felt the moments before). But there is also the awkward silence, when you wish you weren’t there, when you wish you could walk away but can’t for a physical or moral reason.
Was my own childhood bathed in silence? I don’t know. In a way it was, but that was the other silence. The silence of things unsaid, even in the absence of physical silence. And I avoided that silence as much as I could. I remember dinner just with my Mum (Dad was still at work when it was time for me to eat, I think), and always insisted she asked me the questions from some TV game show (Questions Pour un Champion). It wasn’t so much a thirst for knowledge (though there was that), than a desire to avoid any ‘serious’ conversation at all cost. Not that I knew or thought there was anything serious to talk about, but just that I felt uncomfortable in THAT silence with either parent in fact. I think in most of my childhood/teenage years, I just felt comfortable and peaceful when alone in my own room, reading or daydreaming. If my parents were away one evening or the other though, I went downstairs to listen to the little music I had on the stereo (my, that first listen to Disintegration, one evening, turning the sound up as I couldn’t hear a thing at the start and when Plainsong finally crashed in in all its glory, that was an emotional moment). But yeah, looking back now with all I’ve learnt over the last few years, I guess it was very much the INFP(-T) thing.
I think I’ve learnt to be more social and I actually enjoy it a lot, sometimes in smaller doses, always struggling to find the balance, and I feel I have to express myself a little more at times, but it can be so awkward, and as alluded above, what triggered my idea for this page was so frustrating. But then it’s the virtual world. Perhaps all those years ago, I felt it was a better world for me, talk to people online rather than in presence. But not just COVID but other things in my life and the evolution of this society made me realise that now I so much prefer to have people presence, not necessarily continuously but still, to talk and to express. Sure, sometimes I can be blind on the spot for a reason or another (that December evening), but then I just want to communicate. And that’s why silence can hurt so much too. Probably a parameter in that February 2023 depression dealt with somewhere else, and somehow while it’s weird, when I felt better in April, I realised I was kind of put in a stupid Omerta that I didn’t have to obey. I was free to express myself as long as it didn’t encroach on anyone’s freedom. Wordings meant I felt I was keeping my word, but I did express also a slight doubt about it, but did not expect any return so I could live with the silence in the other direction. And I was not going to abuse my right to speak, because you know, respect still is important. The fact that it lead to some weird paranoia or misunderstanding the other way could not continually be my responsibility, I can only be responsible for myself. Dialogue is a key, but it has to be shared, otherwise it is, of course, a monologue. Anyway, that’s a big digression, because the idea for this came more just at the onset of depression, so the ensuing freedom was not even foreseen, whichever way it eventually took.
I can keep silent, I can talk (you still have to get it out of me most of the time, and it’s not that easy, people do forget or are not aware that I am still an ‘introvert’ at heart, certainly in the concepts of the MB personality categorisations, I’d say), even though I am fairly adept socially so can mask that. But I’ve ranted about all that elsewhere on this site already.
So rather than carry on aimlessly, I will end with a quote I got from a website I’m not even sure I can find again, while doing a web search on ‘Silence is a killer’. I had plans to send that in an e-mail, but as usual, I twisted and turned and decided it was a little too melodramatic for the intended recipient. In the end, I guess sharing it or not with her made no difference one way or another.
“Silence as a game, as in the silent treatment, is passive aggressive and and damaging relationships. But silence as a coping mechanism is equally fatal for relationships, even when it’s motivated by self-preservation rather than manipulation. We don’t have to keep allowing quiet to be the silent killer of relationships. There’s a simple solution — even if it’s not always easy to do. Speaking up when we’re in the kind of pain that shuts us down is never easy, but if we value the relationships at risk, we have to move past the pain and do it. To offer up an apology. To admit to insecurities. To say that we feel hurt or lonely or ignored.”
Actually, re-reading this at last, I kind of regret not sending it. Perhaps, she’d have understood things better than with what my own clumsy and frustrated words offered. Either way it still resonates extraordinarily with me, it’s applicable to any sort of relationship (that is, two people involved in any sort of way, it doesn’t have to be romantic), and somehow I feel that in April last year, I actually applied that advice there, while she didn’t. Not a blame to be had, perhaps just a question of a little more maturity and confidence in oneself and it took me far too long to even get near there in my life (again….the old INFP-T, though I may be a little too much of an extreme delayed case in development there).
P.S: by entering the first sentence of the quote on Google, I thought I may have found the original article. However, a close examination shows a little difference on pronouns, and formulation at the end of the whole quote. I didn’t do any edit myself you can be sure of that. I cannot quickly find another article, so that was not the one I used. However, it means that either it was published in a slightly different form by the same person on different sites, or that one plagiarised or copied the other with only minor adaptations (no idea about the whole article, just that bit). Therefore, I don’t think I should particularly link to the one I just found, as it may not be the original of the original, while it definitely was not the one I used.