Silence isn’t really a part of the living world. On a “quiet” morning when I walk in the woods there’s quite the hubbub going. Finches, doves, frogs, sparrows, muskrats, squirrels. They all furrow and murmur. That’s before accounting what other humans, canines and I add to the ruckus.
If a person hears nothing it’s either because they happen to be a predator afoot in the world and all god’s creatures have tensed to escape the notice of hungry eyes and ears that. Or, it’s because that person has fortified themselves in some a manmade thing, (edifice or transport), that shutters out the sounds of the living world. That old cliché of where someone says; “It’s silent, too silent,” reflects a truth; out in nature silence is evidence of a world on edge.
I suspect the same holds true in our big, busy simian brains. Silence, the cessation of thoughts, isn’t an achievable constant in the wilds of our minds. We might scan our minds with our predator’s eyes and scare the fauna of our mind into petrification for a moment or two. But soon enough they’re back to the business at hand.
As a writer this is good news. All you have to do to write is be attentive and listen. Give your mind a moment and it will babble like a brook or tweet like a bird.
Go ahead and join the rest of nature. Make some noise.
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Every Saturday I post a prompt in “The Fearless Songwriter” group on Facebook. There’s a great little community of songwriters growing over there. Join in. (The best way to keep track of all I do is to sign up for my mailing list).
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