In Pursuit of Silence

1

(RUSTLING)

(BIRD SQUAWKING)

(CRICKETS CHIRPING)

(COUGHING)

(BELL TOLLING)

(INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS)

(PHONES RINGING)

(AIRPLANE APPROACHING)

HELEN LEES:
I was lucky to

live in a house

when I was growing up

as a child

that was located

in quite a silent location.

There was also a good view

out of my bedroom window.

And I guess, as a young child,

I fell in love with it.

But I didn't know

what that meant at all.

I didn't even know what it was,

to be honest.

So, how do you talk coherently

about silence?

You could talk about silence...

Does it exist

in a decibel sense?

A noise sense,

or a lack of noise sense?

And the literature is clear that

silence doesn't exist

in that sense.

GEORGE PROCHNIK:

The etymological roots

of the word for silence

are somewhat contested.

There are two words

in particular

that people go back to.

There's the Gothic

term ana-silan,

and then desinere.

One of them has to do with

the wind dying down

and the other has to do with

a kind of stopping of motion.

They're both to do with an

interruption, not just of sound,

but the roots of silence

are also to do with

the interruption of our own...

The imposition of our own egos

on the world.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

MAGGIE ROSS:
Almost all of

the early theologians

talk about the ultimate

worship of God is silence.

And that God dwells in

the silence of eternity.

(MONKS SINGING CHANT)

The history of monastic life

is as old as the history

of the human race.

I think the whole history

of shamans

is a history of

a kind of proto-monasticism

where someone in the tribe

has clearly, evidently,

a facility with silence

and a facility

with understanding the unspoken

processes of the world.

(CHANT CONTINUES)

Retreating from

the cacophony of the world

is stepping towards

everything that's essential.

It's about stepping

towards the world

and really about learning

how to love the world again.

SUSAN CAIN:
Historically,

solitude has always had

an exalted place in our culture

and it's really only recently

that it has fallen from grace

and now needs to be restored

to its rightful place.

You look at all

the religious traditions,

Buddha, Jesus and

Mohammed, Moses,

these were all seekers

who would go off into the woods,

think their thoughts,

have their revelations,

and then come back

and share those revelations

with the wider world.

We lose a lot

when we don't allow people...

Not just allow,

but encourage people

to go off by themselves.

You know, whether literally into

the woods, or metaphorically,

to just go

and chart your own journey

and do it by yourself.

There are certain paths

in this life

that you've got to walk alone

and that's the only way

to do them.

(BIRDS AND INSECTS CHIRPING)

(BELL TOLLING)

(MEN CHANTING)

(MAN SPEAKING JAPANESE)

Through Zen, you need to feel

the silence with your body,

experience it every day,

and then it becomes part of you.

That is what practicing Zen

is about.

That is the life with Zen.

You honestly

and genuinely

live everyday life

through silence.

It's not like you are just

being silent and do nothing.

(SMALL BELL RINGING)

(ALL CHANTING IN MONOTONE)

Would you tell

our panel, please,

what your name is

and where you're from?

My name is John Cage.

I'm from Stony Point, New York.

He is probably the

most controversial figure

in the musical world today

and when you hear

his performance,

if you'll forgive me,

you will understand why.

The instruments

that he will use

include a water pitcher,

an iron pipe,

a goose call, a bathtub,

five radios all hooked up

and a grand piano.

Between 1950 and 1952,

when Cage created his

most important piece of music,

Cage had

a series of revelations.

And the revelations informed

the rest of his life

and they informed

the rest of his music, too.

He'd been interested in

silence for a long time

and he had been appreciating

noise for a long time.

So, he had this dualism

about silence versus noise.

So, he was looking for silence

as an alternative to noise.

When he ventured into

an anechoic chamber in Boston,

he was looking for

the quietest place on Earth,

because Ramakrishna had said,

"Find the silence

and you will find God."

JOHN CAGE:
And I heard,

in that room, two sounds.

One was high and one was low.

And I thought there was

something wrong with the room.

I went outside

and found the engineer in charge

and he said the high one was

your nervous system in operation

and the low one

was your blood circulating.

KAY LARSON:
He realizes

that silence is an abstraction,

it's a human concept,

and what's actually happening

is that

Cage and his own body

and his own being

are completely

interconnected with all beings

and all bodies of beings,

everywhere,

and that everyone

shares the same ground.

Then it became clear that...

That the function of art

is not to communicate one's

personal ideas or feelings,

but rather to imitate nature

in her manner of operation.

LARSON:
Cage's most important

piece of music is,

as many people know,

actually not music at all.

It's four and a half minutes

of silence.

When Cage

first performed that piece

with David Tudor as his pianist,

he performed it

in Woodstock, New York,

at a little barn called

Maverick Concert House,

and the audience went berserk.

This is 1952. August 29, 1952.

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