From: Writing Into the Silence
First class, First exercise
A.
Listening exercise. Eyes open. Just
listen.
Then follow a single sound as it
disappears back into silence.
Again.
Now listen to the sounds within the
room.
Now listen to the sounds beyond the
room.
As they mingle– near/far,
human/animal/machine... sounds of nature, wind... Feel how sounds extend the
sensation of space. Not only opening distance, but shape and layers.
Hold it all in your attention on listening.
Can you hear/sense the silence
around and behind the sounds? The silence that holds sound, and allows sound to
arise and fall away.?
Synesthesia: with your eyes open
you may find that motion and sound begin to combine within your imagination.
What about other senses? Smell, taste... Can you hold it all in your listening
attention, and listen to motion,
color, etc?
Where are you? Listening from an
inner silence?
B
Go and find a space from which to
listen. Take some time just listening, and let listening empty you. Empty
yourself into the silence that holds these sounds.
Sounds occur. They arise and fall
away--inside the great empty space of silence.
This silence is not the absence of
sound. Silence is not inside of anything
A sound is not a thing because it
happens and it ends. Perhaps it is an event. The silence does not happen or
end.
Listen. These sounds have nothing
to do with you, the small you, the you that is planning and thinking, hoping,
worrying, remembering.
Try to listen until the sounds are
not out there (and not in you either, not now)
Listen as if you are among them. When you are ready, from
this attentive silence, write the first image that comes to mind. No matter
what comes. And follow it, as if you were listening to your own mind
uncurl--wherever it goes. Twenty minutes.
C.
Return. Discuss.
Now, opening what you have written, using white space as a visual cue for
"silence"
copy what you wrote, taking up much
more space on the paper. Write on every other line. Big margins. One side of
page. No punctuation. Separate into phrases– we aren't looking for line breaks
here, just smaller units of sense. Don't worry about it too much – there are
infinite ways to break it, and each one will yield a different result.
Read this slowly to yourself– with
pauses. "Hear" the words against the silence. Read again.
To
disclose what is present.
What is this about? Can you
surprise yourself with an answer that rises before thinking/spontaneously, even
irrationally.
Stay with that. Write a few words
about that.
Then: "What about x?"
And" "What about y?"
Ask it questions, good, open
neutral questions.
D.
Break.
Return and ask again- what is this
about? Receive a very different answer. There are so many ways into a new piece
of writing. When we close down too quickly we miss the various directions that
open.
E.
Voluntary reading aloud. We listen
once, then have it read again, making notes the second time. To say: "what
does this seem to be about?"
Different sensibilities. Hearing
differently, each of us taking in different aspects.
There is a silence of possibility, an emptiness of potential behind, around,
and within everything we create.
To disclose what is present:
Read very slowly, giving time to
the spaces.
Repeat lines. Move your lips. Let
it become strange, turning over and over. A chant, a magic summons, a grocery
list...
Words become clear/ they become
nonsense. All of that is present.
Images separate, they meld. They
shapeshift. Tone changes. Lift your eyes. Return. Echoes of other voices below
and woven through this voice. What is present here? Unfathomable, even this
fragment, quickly produced from a prompt exercise, holds more than you can
realize (make real.)
Now give up looking for the
meaning. Let the crazy richness of it come forward.
Realize how limited, and limiting,
your meanings were. Again and still, disclose what is present. The present. It
changes when you look at it.
What was present when you wrote
this is now scattered and absorbed in this. Something else becomes present. It
changes when you read it. What are these images?
So clear, so strange.