"Looking at the world in silence, and in silence writing what is seen. Writing the silence itself. This is what it is to love the world."
That's the first sentence of The Book of All Loves, a novel by AgustÃn Fernández Mallo, one of my favourite writers, translated to English by Thomas Bunstead and published in the UK by the wonderful Fitzcarraldo Editions.
That sounds like what I'd like to do in this journal. But how to write silence?
In 1973 my sister gave me a book called 'Silence' by the composer John Cage. It is a collection of lectures, anecdotes, aphorisms and meditations, mostly abut music, sound, zen buddhism and mushrooms, all of which Cage knew a lot about. I loved that book - it was so cool and thought-provoking.
Cage told how he had once spent a few moments alone in an anechoic chamber - a room specially designed to absorb and deaden all sound. He said that he heard two sounds in the chamber, one high-frequency and one low-frequency, and had been told that the first was his nervous system and the second his blood circulating.
I've just read, half a century later, that this is not quite accurate. The high-frequency noise would have been a phantom sound - commonly known as tinnitus. Apparently 74% of people have such auditory hallucinations in an anechoic chamber.
For about forty years I've suffered from a severe case of tinnitus - a constant, high-pitched, slightly-modulating whistling in both ears, often loud - the result of playing in a rock band. It is impossible for me to experience silence.
In 1952 Case composed 4' 33", a piece in which the musicians come on stage, take up their instruments, but don't play them for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. It's often called 'the silent piece' but if you attend a performance you hear a lot of sound. Coughing, shuffling, rustling, air-conditioning, distant traffic, your own breathing etc.
The piece was inspired by Cage's zen experience, sitting in silence to meditate. That's a different sort of silence. As ChatGPT told me, in spiritual practices silence often represents a space for meditation or reflection. It can be a state of inner peace or stillness, where the mind quiets and allows for deeper insight or connection. Even with the tinnitus I can sometimes experience that.
So "writing the silence" can mean writing in a state of inner peace - quietly observing and reflecting. That's what I'm trying to do (without trying), lying on a sofa in my blue-green kitchen.