Silence defined: Complete absence of sound.” dictionary.com. At times, we all welcome important silence in our lives, particularly when things break down, but we also enjoy the speech and sounds of friends and music. As a state, silence would be boring and monotonous without some sound in our lives.
We all know people who talk too much, and some who talk too little, remindful of two ancient proverbs:
— “Speech is silver; silence is golden.”
— “Talking comes by nature, silence by wisdom.”
Both reflect the thought that wisdom entails good judgment in knowing when to speak and what to say. More recently, other celebrities took a different tact, with a twist of humor:
—“ if God wanted people to talk more than listen, he would have given people two mouths instead of two ears.” Anwar Sadat (1918—1981), the third president of Egypt, who was assassinated for making a peace treaty with Israel.
— ” Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.” Muhammad Ali (1942—1974), the silver tongued boxing champion, who rarely kept silent on any subject.
In music, sound predominates, but silence still remains an important part. Even musical notation include an occasional rest — imposed silence between the notes. Using an oxymoron in the title, the noted song writer and performer, Paul Simon, composed “Sounds of Silence,” which reached the top of the charts in 1966, and served as part of the sound track for the movie, The Graduate in 1967. It addressed humanity’s inability to communicate effectively with one another, and our ready acceptance of group think, as expressed by the mass media:
— “. . . People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share. No one dared. Disturb the sounds of silence.”
To a musician, even one who turns the amps up loud, music is a mixture of both sounds and silence. The sounds are the notes or chords; the silence, the spaces between. Otherwise music would be just one loud noise.
But, when it comes to silence, “Mums the word.”