The “Art” of Noiselessness

Sometimes it is the silences in the middle that have the most meaning.

Today seems to be all about noise. Seriously. Soon after midnight, P woke up screaming and spent the next almost 2 hours alternating between high pitched animal howls and discomforted mumbling. But not silence. Even AFTER he finally went to sleep, he managed to keep me and The Bruce awake for a long time with moans and talking in his sleep.

This morning, L decided she was NOT going to school and let us know this with a high-pitched hissy fit.

The neighbors were trimming their bushes with a very noisy chainsaw-type contraption (which if I was not as girly a girl as I am I would know the name of).

My phone rang a LOT today but only when I was NOT in the room.

The children spent the majority of the afternoon bouncing between squeals of delights and shrieks of Mommy-Please-Let-Me-DO-What-I-Want.

Even The Bruce came home from school all "noised" out having spent the day dealing with 8 year olds who did NOT know when to shut up.

Rehearsal seemed like it would be a welcome refuge from all of the noise. But, alas, the noise just continued - only in a different vein.

What is so beautiful about this play is that (much like Pinter and his ilk), Blessing has some wonderful silences built into the script. Neither of my castmates, however, seemed very comfortable with the silences. Rather than relishing in them – enjoying them – they seem to be in a huge hurry to fill the silence with their next lines. I think this stems from a fear of the silence.

I understand that fear. Too well. I am a nervous chatterer. In life when I am nervous, I will chatter away (which ironically gives the IMPRESSION that I am actually confident but that is the subject of another blog).

The way a person knows I finally feel completely comfortable with them is when I can sit there and shut the hell up – THAT is true intimacy.

At some point, I would like to try a day of silence. See where that lands me. It might make me completely crazy, who knows. For now, however, I will bathe in the seconds of silence as I manage to come across them. However infrequently those seconds may occur.