The Power of Silence and Sound

Call of the Wild

Bernie Krause on the Disappearing Music of the Natural World

Tonino: Is sound a better way to judge the health of an environment than using our eyes?

Krause: I think so. It’s easy to fool the eye. Frame a photograph just so in Central Park, and you’ll think the picture was taken in a pristine northeastern forest. But the ear will tell you otherwise. Slight shifts in sound can signal disruption or stress within a habitat. In most cases I can determine if a habitat is healthy within a few minutes. I tell my students: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a soundscape is worth a thousand pictures.

Trains, Planes, and Godhead

At the end of the runway or the edge of the railroad tracks, I hear an echo of godhead. I experience the sublime. It embarrasses me to say that. After all, we’re supposed to be awed by nature. We’re supposed to find the sublime in waves crashing on a rocky shore or the silence of snowy fields, not railway and airport noise. . . . Nothing goes to my core like a jet turbine or a diesel-electric locomotive.

The Desert Within

Douglas Christie on the Power of Silence and Contemplation

Tonino: What specific practices did the desert hermits engage in?

Christie: Silence is a big part of it. The experience of silence in the ancient Christian tradition is hard to grasp, though. There are sayings about the virtue of remaining silent, but silence itself, as it was practiced, is not completely accessible to us. It is by definition mostly hidden from view. I’m tempted to say it’s like a field of energy that grounds everything and that you sense as you descend into it. . . .

We’re such linguistic creatures — look at you and me, yakking away. In a world of noise it’s easy to underestimate the power of silence, which can be the ground that gives rise to a deeper understanding of the self, the world, God. . . .

Ask yourself: Am I able to identify some ground of silence that has helped me? Where have I sensed that silence? Was it in the natural world? Was it while looking at a wild animal? Was it in my social life or in a relationship with someone I love? Most of us probably know the fraught, brittle kind of silence that comes up between two people, but what I mean is a kind of patient attention, a receptivity to what might emerge if we could simply shut up for five minutes; if we could resist the urge to fill every last space with me.

Since You Left

It was gradual, your silence.
Amidst the noise of our children
I chattered on awhile before I noticed,
then to keep me company
when I felt its chill.