Sounds of Silence

Yesternight my dreams played for a lifetime and longer still. I had a great vision of swimming leagues beneath the ocean, where strange and shadowy creatures cruised my flanks. A viciously-fanged great serpentine beast in the form of a moray eel but with the ridged, glistening scales of a viper – violet, green, and bright blue - stirred the waters, menacing but beautiful. And all around me were other people, strangers I’m sure, all lost in that fathomless twilight and frozen in the wake of the serpent beast that threatened but never attacked. Then suddenly came the sense that my breath was fast leaving me, and I started on a desperate surge to the distant surface. Below pursued the serpent. It gained closer and closer with every tail swipe, but the strength left my arms and my motion slowed and staggered, breath spent and body hanging still in the twilight, hopelessly suspended above the jaws of the serpent. Then light! Warm and subtle light. Though my lashes were still leaden; though every fibre and sinew was still stubborn to the call of the new day, I rose with a prodigious yawn and stretch, the instreaming of air radiating as a tingle far into the farthest reaches of my body: arms, legs, fingertips, toes – all gradually teased alive.

An open window invites the world in. This land, usually bathed wholly in the tropical sun, is today swept beneath the shadows of troops of great white clouds. The breeze they’ve sailed on is cool and gentle; softly it hums and plays the rustle of leaves – a rare tune in these parts – and how calming the music is to me. Now awake but with eyes still shut, the great symphony rises. These lands are ruled too by life, more than you can imagine. Here the oceans of leaf, grass, and branch, intersperse the bustle and busy-making of the countless busy Hims and Hers that often call me to their purposes: to some manner of conscripted work, to some endless and reputedly worthwhile pursuit, threatening to commit me to an end that interests me little and bears no promise of silence. But no, I look to silence. Here now hear the cuckoo and barbet, the laughing dove and cordonbleu, the magpie and myna, the red-winged and cape starlings, and so many others all tweeting, chirping, crowing and singing in unison – a spontaneous and perfect symphony. To that ensemble joins the harmonising of the crickets, katydids in soprano, and luminous-shelled beetles zipping to and fro, conducting it all as they go.

No better a time is there to play Kusanagi - this music rises sweepingly with the midday sun as it widens the horizon and eats away at its limits to give volume to the heavens and the mind’s eye. The stabbing prickles of cold water assume an unusual ecstasy as the music builds; deep rolling drums, the sound of hanging crystals and their sparkles echoing through the room - instruments whose names matter not to the sounds they breathe out – for they all are magic! And they fill my body with magic that radiates and pulls with every deep breath and trickle of water that smooths rivers down my skin. Ascending higher still I play Sundara, short and yet as full as any piece of music has ever been. The caricatured voice builds up a certain energy as it grows, an energy that invites movement in the body that listens. Chased by a subtle drumbeat that sparks the now greying clouds into a crackle, eventually, the music quietens before spilling into a surreal strumming of rustic strings. How namelessly beautiful, as my body moves in ecstatic dance, puppeteered on those cosmic strings and reverberating in the echoes of every strum, lost entirely in the silences between every sound – given to the music yet oh so very free. In these moments the time slows, loses all integrity and withers into the recesses of non-existence.

But in other moments, where the thinking has no pause, where the world is said to forever be in motion, and where to rest becomes an affront to existence, here time finds its place. Here we go on chasing, lapping after the future - with its basket of promises - and reminiscing on the easeful gait of our pasts. This world I have lived, toiling at the screen and tapping at the keyboard. I have sat deathly still with knees bent and my back eventually succumbing to a hunch, and here I found no silence. Here was the ocean deep of my dreams, and no breath could find me here, nor I it. Here was the serpent that circled and kept me still, the one that keeps us all still, always threatening but never attacking. But I take to my headphones, where Narsilions “Montserrat” pierces the plain monotony that defines the current circumstance. In the strumming and ethereal voices, I hear the tale of a dormant soul. Asleep for ages and never having known it, dormant like an ancient volcano pulsing billows of thick smoke. Then suddenly rising – no rushing, out! Rushing as I in my dream to the surface for a breath of air. The drums take over and ride the undulations of an almost cosmic flute - in this music is the vision of a volcano approaching full release. Menacing, destructive, feared, and yet in truth - beautiful and restorative.

There is sound, but the one who listens is silent. Or becomes silent when the setting sun does call and the farcical plays in time come to an end. At home, grounded onto a yoga mat and basking in the essence of sandalwood incense, time once again fades away. Luminous emptiness, the album by Hang Massive, plays crisply on speaker. The air carries that uniquely elegant rhythm from the handpan drum as I drift into a vinyasa that answers to the cries for movement that have filled my body throughout the day. “The secret kissing of the sun and moon” begins to play as my body winds and drops, pushes and pulls through pose after pose, my mind completely absent to everything but the rich sensations of a body in motion and the comings and goings of transporting sounds. Here I have no use for thoughts and no regard for time. There is not a thing I lack. The music plays on and each movement spans an eternity; each movement streams from the previous one like tributaries running smoothly into the body of a large river as it winds along its course, out into the distant horizon and even further and further out still.

I’ve worked up a sweat and my forearms burn with exhaustion. I settle my body down and onto my back and lie sprawled out, entirely at ease, breathing gently, calmly. Enya's “Drifting" begins to play and there I find myself, drifting at the surface of a vast and enigmatic ocean – the ocean of my dream. And here my breath finds me, and smooths into a gentle rising and dropping in my belly. How peaceful. The soft piano keys and the strength of that cello; the waves pulse on and on and on, and wherever they go - there am I. And then it becomes so obvious – that this is not the escape, this is the reality. Here in sound silence, here at the surface where suns and moons trade, where life abounds and carries on for nought but its own sake – this is true wakefulness. And the serpent, who lurked the dark depths of the ocean, only ever threatened to wake me up to this silence by rousing from me – a breath. Thunder crackles outside and a pulse of white light pierces the dimly lit room. The music fades and melts into only silence. My eyes open, and soon they close again as I return to the great depths of dreaming.