The Shape of Silence (a preview)


I walked into a pool of silence. It was a 8 x 6 x 3,2 metre wide silence, deep and wide. All I wanted to do was deposit my cigarettes before they got broken by my neglect. Neglect is a hammer that functions best in noise. Because silence gives itself away. Silence metamorphoses. It adapts.  It can transmute its form and become a hammer, snapping habits and expectations into shards unrecognizable.  Quietly now, no one needs to notice.
Our successes look pathetic in the wake of destruction. They become magnetized, attracting pathos, manipulating everything with their charge. Ironically, I feel a lack of power as I open up my drawer, a 2 x 2 x 0,4 foot wide receptacle of my experiences. The two smokes slip from my fingers and seem to crash in. They are an overt noise that draws my attention for longer than I expect but shorter than I can count. As I shut the drawer, the silence claims dominion again., without too much of a fuss. It is not like a person trying to move quietly in a quiet room, or a hunting animal wrapping itself in covertness. No, oh no. This is silence its self. A noun and a verb meeting to create something that sucks futility out of your marrow and makes you watch.
I lost the will to play a loud song. I misplaced my will to speak, like a loose key. Modern life is a war against silence. Death is a very quiet “Shut up!” and it is ubiquitous.  Our ears may miss it but the rest of us knows how to listen. We cannot deny the conditions and clauses within its utterance.
Silence will still hold tetra-joules of energy even when our debacles grow tired.
It affronts me from all sides.


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This is a brief excerpt from my forthcoming ePub (Jan/Feb 2014) which focus on my memoirs, diarised creativity and the nurtured chaos that is my many lives. I am also currently seeking an affordable publishing company so I may produce hardcopies of the works. The book, at least to I, is not dead.

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