Hush

I've noticed a few things about enforced silence. First, that your mind will try to sway you to do otherwise; it will say things like "why are you doing this, it's boring," or "it's actually much more difficult to talk to people," literally trying to revoke my Fifth amendment right! Then, after some time, you come to realize how similar it is to your normal routine, how little you actually connect with people from day to day. You recognize most interactions are superficial and transactionary - a hello in passing, the word yes at a checkout counter, a thank you to someone who held the door for you. Little one syllable words, yes no and please, begin to stand out as the most dominant words in the language, and even they seem insignificant. It reveals just how much a smile and hand wave can convey, the art of story telling alive on a person's face; the language of the body.

It makes you fear it, too, not speaking. It is a reminder of how comfort-seeking the mind is, how much it likes to adhere to the behaviors it has grown accustomed to. You start to feel strange answering no and yes with a shake or a nod; rude for not saying thank you. Not talking to strangers somehow strikes you as offensive, as though your reticence becomes some strange badge of superiority. The mind begins craving verbal expression, conversation with friends, the movement and shapes of words with the mouth.

It also makes you keenly aware of the words that do slip out; flares of frustration and dissatisfaction, disbelief or uncertainty; words like "c'mon," "really," "shit," "wow," "wait, what?" It makes me curious to know what significance I should ascribe to them, if any. Are they somehow more innately human than other words? Are they more fit to express the sentiments and feelings associated with the human condition? What if they are the true voice of the unconscious mind? The human analogue to barks and yelps. Or maybe it's that these thoughts are just less dense, too light to be held captive by silence; meaningless bubbles of helium.

Quietude may still the voice, but it doesn't have the same effect on the mind. Uncertainty and curiosity don't simply fade away once one employs a more taciturn tongue. You begin to notice what types of things prompt you to want to speak; danger, for yourself or another, seeing someone you know, or want to. I cannot help but think that language was borne of danger and courtship. Back in the day though, I mean in caveman days, when rape was cool, was there really a need to woo a woman? I'd imagine rape quickly became taboo once too many young girls were killed by excessive force, or from penetration - because you know, there must have been rampant incestuous pedophilia going on in the good old days. So once we established rape as wrong, incest and pedophilia went out with the bath water.

But it was danger first that gave rise to language. It had to be. The crier that could communicate the precise color of catastrophe rolling across the horizon could facilitate the appropriate response from the pack. Those who could evoke varying levels of fear and desperation were the best speakers. Perhaps this is why certain words are stickier than others, words that inspire panic and dread and death seem to cling to the bottom of our minds like gum under a desk. It has all the allure of a vestigial organ we cannot cast off. Then, sadness too has its place, as a unifier, a reinforcer of the precious, precariousness of life - the language of loss springing to life through a funeral dirge, beautiful in its irony. Then, all hail Bob Dylan, the Lizard King of Lamentation.

Wow. What some silence will stir in the mind. Baseless anthropological ruminations, rape, incest and Bob Dylan. I wonder what the birds sing about.