Reflections @ 50: Sound and Silence

This blog has been quiet for a few weeks now—mostly because I have been caught in the “feast” part of the “feast or famine” cycle of busy-ness. Things have been so busy that I could hardly breathe (although I had to and, of course, did), let alone have time to sit down and write.

During this frenzy of activity, my 50^th birthday came and went like a whirlwind, with little time for celebration other than a few glasses of Champagne during a break at a rehearsal. I was also involved in a recording project dedicated to sampling live voice for a database of actual vocal sound.

Paul Simon’s birthday was a few days ago, and probably because of this recording project, “The Sound of Silence” came to mind.

Silence is something I have not savored much of, particularly lately. In a materialistic world that seems increasingly more dedicated to machines than to people, there is so much mechanical noise generated. During this recording project, we struggled to keep moving forward with the work, dodging exterior noises that included 18-wheeler trucks, Blue Angel jets and other aircraft, the beeping of the backing delivery vans, motor cycles with tweaked mufflers, car alarms, lawn mowers and accompanying leaf/dirt/pollution blowers and a barking dog. Of all those sounds that challenged our progress, the barking dog was the only one that made my colleagues smile.

I am a musician, but as much as I love music, I have discovered over time that I crave more quiet. But perhaps I am only acknowledging now what has been true for me all along. I do generate a joyful noise, and I can bellow pretty loudly when I need to, but I have always thought of music as an antidote to noise, as an emotive and healing salve for the soul. Because of that, it tends to hold a sacred place in my life—I hold myself to be a sacred vessel that contains music—and I have found that I listen to music less frequently, or perhaps less frivolously.

“The Sound Of Silence” is a song that touches the start my life and the current of it—like bookends. Paul Simon wrote that song to commemorate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My earliest memory as a tiny tot was sitting on the floor in our Derby Street home in Berkeley, watching those white horses slowly draw the caisson, on which the flag draped coffin lay, to Arlington on our twelve inch black-and-white television. There was very little talk while the cameras rolled on this spectacle. I really understood that this was a somber event, one that could only be marked with reverent silence. The sight of a mother with small children, one just as small as I was, standing in the cold, made a nation and the world understand a sadness for which there could be no propitiation. Simon’s song came along a little later, and it was on the charts and the AM stations for a long time, and it informed nation’s musical history while it commented on our sociopolitical history.

This past September 11^th, Simon performed this signature song to at a memorial ceremony to that dread day when we were once again, as a nation, brought to an awe that could only inspire silence. Yes, so fitting, this song, to be related not only to the turbulent mid-century before, but to the turbulence of the 21^st Century, as well.

I remember where I was, on September 11^th, 2001. The memory that stays with me is the silence of the skies, due to the grounding of all flights following that horrible day. The skies were silent, but for birds on the wing. I could not remember when it had been so quiet! And We the People were so subdued with shock that for once, we too were quiet; we did not know what to say.

We are, each individual, a music that continues to be born from the silence of creation. I think that we were meant to revere the sacred awesomeness of silence. Instead, we pile noise upon noise, hiding from what is truly profound within a tangled decibel jungle. Garbage trucks weekly shake our homes like an earthquake. Machines rock our world and impair our ears. To a certain extent, we have come to fetishize and worship the machines we have made, and we have done so at the expense of basic human compassion or regard. Witness this week’s frenzy of purchasing the very latest iPhone and tell me I am wrong. Apple couldn’t even stop retail marketing and promotion on the day Steve Jobs died, and he was the music that sang the song that brought Apple into being. What does this say about our society?

Qol d’mamah daqqah. These are old words from the first book of Kings, the story of Elijah eluding the anger of Jezebel. God wasn’t in the wind, s/he wasn’t in the earthquake, and s/he wasn’t in the fire: God was in the qol d’mamah daqqah: the still small voice, the soft murmuring sound, the whisper, the sound of silence. This truly awed Elijah and he covered his head. But it what God said next that is the point of the story:

What are you doing here?

What, indeed?

As I continue in my musical life, I am learning to observe the musical rest with a new reverence. The musical rest is where God will sing a response to our music.

May we all listen carefully, that the holy sound of silence may speak to us.

What wonders might we hear if we truly listen?

Suppers

The culminating place of all our days,

the oaken slab and benches, the linen cloth,
light of candles extending day into night;
we meet together here to celebrate
the bounties of land and life and being.

Each breath within each revolution
is distilled by the sanctity of this gathering,
the center of being and being integral,
for this is where we recognize
our collective needs and gifts.

Breakfast and lunch,
they fuel the daily hum and flow;
but suppers feed all growth made
in the hours of our rest,
feed our journey toward Infinity.

Suppers feed evenings filled with joys,
like the cup of wine,
like the leavened bread,
like the savories and the sweets,
that lead to reflection, to dance and to song.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Point/Counterpoint

I emerge from a womb of prayer

into the moonlit night
to find you with me.

Where one had been alone,
now two walk together
over our desert landscape
of being and imagining.

One speaks,
            the other hears
                        and responds—

More and more, call and response
            leads to gentle ponderings
                        and conversation;
a ritual of exploration,
wherein all boundaries shrink—
openings appear and widen,
            inviting entry.

This dialogue becomes
            less about words,
                        more about touching,
            even melding
—an attempt at embracing
the challenge of all openings,
while still finding new entries,
            and deeper meanings,
until finally conversation
            becomes unnecessary,
as our thoughts weave and interleave,
braiding being beyond anything called self.

Ah, what comes after such requiting,
but merging into one,
            again and again,
with equal measure of knowing
            and forgetting
            and discovering
            and remembering,
delighting in the dance of your will
            with my volition,
opposites attracting
            without distracting
from the Truth that is us and All,
            that is now,
                        that is new,
a new birth in Creation,
spinning from withinnerly inward out.

Harmonics rise,
sounding, soaring, celebrating
over our timeless duet;
new music
for a newer dawn.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Save the Post Office -- Write a Letter!

About a month ago, I was helping my parents with the last detail of their move from our town to a town in Arizona: I turned in their Post Office box keys. But, before I could do that, I had to take out whatever mail was still there in the box. A week had gone by, and the box was stuffed to the gills, to the point that there was a half-full overflow Postal bin that I had to collect at the counter.

I sorted through everything at home, after I turned the keys in. Out of that half bin, there were twelve pieces of actual mail; the rest was ads and direct mail catalogs.

I sighed at the waste.

At one time, I worked in the Direct Mail industry at a merge/purge shop. You could add your name and address to the seed names list, and receive copies of any catalog you wanted. (People on the seed names list receive the catalogs, or other mailing pieces from the direct mail campaign, so that they can check to make sure the mailing was done properly.) After a while, I took my name and address off the seed lists, but added that information to the Direct Marketing Association’s Preference File. This file is used to suppress the names and addresses on it from mailing campaigns, so that people won’t get tons of unwanted mail. People might get catalogs from companies they like, but then those companies either sell or exchange your name and address to other like companies—just an extra way to get either more money or more names.

What I found out was that I didn’t want to receive a whole lot of catalogs because I didn’t want to constantly buy things.

There is, after all, only so much room for furniture, cooking utensils and clothes in one’s life. All the things we own, including our image, require care and upkeep. And there are catalogs that sell products and implements to handle the care and upkeep of our image and our stuff. Of course, this all adds up to more stuff and things and gewgaws and wobbity-wobbits and round-to-its and widgets and just plain junk.

The other thing that happened, while I was working in the direct marketing industry, was the rise of the now ubiquitous personal computer, followed closely by the advent and eventual explosion of internet. Quite suddenly, it seemed, everyone could get in touch by electronic mail. Wow!

So, what happened? People stopped writing letters and our United States Postal Employees have become slaves who annually shoulder millions of pounds of bulk third-class mail, bills, circular ads and not a whole lot else.

Now the cry is out to abandon our United States Postal Service, opting instead for all mail being handled by privatized services. The claim is that this will cut bureaucracy and save the taxpayers and the government millions upon zillions of dollars.

I say that this is a bad idea. The US Postal Service has been one of the longest running services that people have been able to depend upon, often when there was nothing else to depend upon. Because the service is run centrally, it has established distribution hubs, transportation routes and flight patterns. There are regulations about what is proper to mail (nothing liquid, perishable, potentially hazardous, etc.) and there are regulated postage fees. You generally have an idea when your mail will be delivered, and you sometimes really count on that!

The privatized business community claims to know better how to run just about any enterprise. But we all know that serving the “bottom line” would require cost cutting in areas ill suited to cuts. I would not be surprised to see disrupted and irregular service, no guarantees of arrival time for time-sensitive material, along with no recourse for disputes. Workers rights would undoubtedly be infringed upon and there would be sharp rise in worker’s compensation claims, due to workers having to deal with irregular packaging and potentially dangerous packages. This would lead to sharp rises in insurance premiums and health care. A complete dismantling of regulated pricing would be a detriment to the public. In short, dismantling of postal regulations could pose potential danger to the public, as well as anyone working in the postal industry.

The business side of mailing aside, I would like to say a few words about history. One of the reasons we know so much about life and thought in previous generations is because of two types of artifacts: letters and ephemera (all those little bits of paper that have doodles, drawings, notes, ads and other things printed or hand written on their surfaces). Since the invention of the telephone, everyone has been writing and actually thinking less. The invention of the typewriter, eventually morphing into what we now call keyboarding, has had the mixed impact of allowing more people to communicate by means of clear and even text, but to the detriment that few people are able to write legibly by hand.

When people talk to one another, the tendency is to think less before speaking. Letter writing takes more time and thought put toward a flow and organization of ideas. Because so much of our communication is ephemeral, dissipating into the ether either by digital deletion or by vocal immediacy, it goes unrecorded. What record will remain of the existence of this generation? Ephemera in the form of catalogs? A few poorly edited newspapers? How will people know what YOU thought about LIFE? Will it be as if you never existed, after you are gone?

Oh, no, no… That is unthinkable. But I want you to think on it.

I am advocating a year (or the rest of your life) of less distraction. Don’t give up your computer, don’t stop social networking or blogging. Do take the time to think, and to organize your thoughts. Do write a letter to someone you love and appreciate. Share your struggles, your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams.

History, and the United States Postal Service, will thank you.

Meanwhile, if you want help the environment by receiving less mail, register your preferences here:

https://www.dmachoice.org/dma/member/home.action

If You Will

the patterns,

they circulate and collide
rendering new designs
attracting, seemingly
calling my name
and waiting for my response.

I find myself unable to speak,
moved as I am by
the confluence of Kosmos
and the weight it places on my soul

a gathering

and a challenge
I must meet with
every atom of my beingness
and aspect of my being.

inertia has been my state
but I find that this is not allowed;
despite my resistance and fear,
I am pulled thither and into the midst.

how shall my voice sound
from within the Withinness?

shall I sing or shall I scream?
shall I be kinged or creamed?

laughter erupts from an interiority;
apparently it knows no inferiority,
nor apparent authority:

it is all a case of simply Making A Start.

From where one Starts is up to you alone,
the words form in my mind
and on my eyes
and in my heart
and bleed into my soul
and through the cellular level
into that blessed confluence
of all that is known and unknown.

But you shall not be alone,
nay, but joined and rejoined in harmonies,

if you will give us the melody.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Innerly Within

Fuelled by the hum of infinity,
mind engages, body joins in,
opening the heart out into the soul,
then becoming the song.

Strands of resonance,
spinning threads of light,
weave a sonic tapestry
that shelters dream-time.

Caught up from within to within,
willingly caught innerly within,
dream-time is the ever-growing realization
that here is where life begins and never ends.

Emerging from this music
into music, from being into
newness, next and beyond,
the song of life finds its wings.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Volition

within the stream of consciousness,
contemplation flows
—about and through,
even melding together—
so that all local molecules
shimmer with union and integrity;
a music of central calm and silence,
of gratitude for being.

all at once,
the call comes down:
the Gentle Whisperer is thirsty,
but the river is dry.

what to do?
            barren clouds and angels
                        whispered amongst themselves:
who will go for us?

which query unraveled the silent music,
faltering the molecular dance,
tearing at the seams of togetherness,
halting flow and thoroughgoing of contemplation.

the crisis registered to one-mind as a challenge.

having returned to now from Now,
i can say i am in this place,
and i will gladly go for us
—quick pour me in!

and so the challenge was answered:
mindful contemplation restored
the river of life
by pouring in the stream of consciousness,
the new water of thanksgiving.

in the way of weather,
the river was drawn to the clouds,
which grew heavy with joyful tears,
and celebrated with a watery dance.

the Gentle Whisperer tasted the libation
and pronounced it good.

the drought was over.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen