14 May 2026

Notes on Silence

There is a silence that arrives when a long project finally ends. Not relief exactly — something more like the sensation of a room after a conversation has been going for hours and then simply stops. The air in the room holds the shape of what just happened. You can feel the structure of the absent sound.

I have been paying attention to different kinds of silence. The silence of early morning in Vienna, which is not quiet — there are birds, there is the low hum of the city beginning — but which has a quality of suspension, of things not yet in motion. The silence of a piece of music between movements, which is technically the same as the silence before the music started but sounds entirely different because of what it is between. The silence after someone says something difficult and waits.

We talk about silence as an absence, but it is almost always a presence. It has a texture, a weight, a meaning that is entirely contextual. The silence of an empty house after everyone has left is different from the silence of an empty house before anyone arrives. The silence of someone who has decided not to speak is different from the silence of someone who cannot find words.

I am learning to sit with silence more deliberately — to resist the reflex toward noise, toward filling, toward the phone in the pocket that can always be reached for. The silence has things in it that the noise is covering. I am not always sure I want to hear them. I am increasingly sure I should.