Barrett Dorko
18-11-2007, 04:06 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I did a very unusual thing while driving between Atlanta and Birmingham on Thursday afternoon – I maintained complete silence. For 167 miles the radio and CD player remained dark and quiet and I never thought twice about changing that.
I will occasionally admit to people in the class that I’m most comfortable while solitary and silent. As talkative as I am and the ease with which I speak in front of large groups, it’s an act, and my natural state is quite different. I speak very little and don’t seek out others for companionship. With few exceptions I don’t easily endure small talk from and with others, and I notice that those exceptions include people related to me.
But I’m a good listener when I feel the subject is important and intriguing. Every day I tune into podcasts and radio shows I find engaging and informative. Predictably, I don’t spend time on the “happy talk” many shows specialize in. When the radio won’t do, I put in a CD and I sing along. I have my father’s voice, and he sang professionally for many years. He met Robert Shaw ( http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Shaw-Robert.htm) in 1944 while in boot camp with the US Navy and was the first member of a group of sailors led by a man who had already been named “America’s greatest choral conductor.” Shaw would go on to be known as the greatest the world has ever seen, and he loved my father’s voice. I presume he would have liked mine as well. My range is from bass to first tenor, and I sing alone in the car between cities, imagining my father doing the same.
But on Thursday something drove me to silence and I’ve been thinking about it since. This morning I dug out an essay from my book ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3070) titled (appropriately) Silence. There I cite a passage from Morris Berman’s Coming to Our Senses ( http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Our-Senses-Morris-Berman/dp/004440719X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195392249&sr=1-5) about family gatherings in his youth. He says that though these were full of warmth and reassurance, he realizes as an adult that one thing was distinctly forbidden – silence. This rule was not explicitly stated anywhere but everybody understood it. He says, “Silence often results in discomfort because it can expose a basic fault in our individual ways of being.” When Berman speaks of a “fault” he means something akin to the San Andreas; the void that is evident only when both external noise and thinking ceases to occupy us. I think we’ll find a lot of therapy there.
Berman points out that in other cultures silence is a comfortable fact of life and known to be therapeutic. He also acknowledges that silence comes in different forms ranging from acceptance to hostility. I find both of these in my classes every time I teach. I love this line from Berman: “The essence of sensory awareness lies in distinguishing our actual experience from our thoughts and fantasies.” It seems to me that if we identify with the latter that we place a veneer of introspection (thoughtfulness) over interoception (internal sensation), and that manual care has to occasionally be about separating feeling from thought. This will require some silence – real silence – and then we have to explore the void.
Between Atlanta and Birmingham I explored my own void. In effect, I treated myself for a variety of things, not the least of which would have been any pain I might have had or pain that was pending.
Therapy should include this, I think. And I guess that’s what I was reminding myself of as I drove quietly past the skyscrapers of Atlanta and than the Talladega National Forest. After all, I don’t treat patients any longer and the silence I promoted while occupied there no longer forms a part of my life. I need it.
I arrived at the Sheraton after dark, checked into my room, and turned on the TV.
I did a very unusual thing while driving between Atlanta and Birmingham on Thursday afternoon – I maintained complete silence. For 167 miles the radio and CD player remained dark and quiet and I never thought twice about changing that.
I will occasionally admit to people in the class that I’m most comfortable while solitary and silent. As talkative as I am and the ease with which I speak in front of large groups, it’s an act, and my natural state is quite different. I speak very little and don’t seek out others for companionship. With few exceptions I don’t easily endure small talk from and with others, and I notice that those exceptions include people related to me.
But I’m a good listener when I feel the subject is important and intriguing. Every day I tune into podcasts and radio shows I find engaging and informative. Predictably, I don’t spend time on the “happy talk” many shows specialize in. When the radio won’t do, I put in a CD and I sing along. I have my father’s voice, and he sang professionally for many years. He met Robert Shaw ( http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Shaw-Robert.htm) in 1944 while in boot camp with the US Navy and was the first member of a group of sailors led by a man who had already been named “America’s greatest choral conductor.” Shaw would go on to be known as the greatest the world has ever seen, and he loved my father’s voice. I presume he would have liked mine as well. My range is from bass to first tenor, and I sing alone in the car between cities, imagining my father doing the same.
But on Thursday something drove me to silence and I’ve been thinking about it since. This morning I dug out an essay from my book ( http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3070) titled (appropriately) Silence. There I cite a passage from Morris Berman’s Coming to Our Senses ( http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Our-Senses-Morris-Berman/dp/004440719X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195392249&sr=1-5) about family gatherings in his youth. He says that though these were full of warmth and reassurance, he realizes as an adult that one thing was distinctly forbidden – silence. This rule was not explicitly stated anywhere but everybody understood it. He says, “Silence often results in discomfort because it can expose a basic fault in our individual ways of being.” When Berman speaks of a “fault” he means something akin to the San Andreas; the void that is evident only when both external noise and thinking ceases to occupy us. I think we’ll find a lot of therapy there.
Berman points out that in other cultures silence is a comfortable fact of life and known to be therapeutic. He also acknowledges that silence comes in different forms ranging from acceptance to hostility. I find both of these in my classes every time I teach. I love this line from Berman: “The essence of sensory awareness lies in distinguishing our actual experience from our thoughts and fantasies.” It seems to me that if we identify with the latter that we place a veneer of introspection (thoughtfulness) over interoception (internal sensation), and that manual care has to occasionally be about separating feeling from thought. This will require some silence – real silence – and then we have to explore the void.
Between Atlanta and Birmingham I explored my own void. In effect, I treated myself for a variety of things, not the least of which would have been any pain I might have had or pain that was pending.
Therapy should include this, I think. And I guess that’s what I was reminding myself of as I drove quietly past the skyscrapers of Atlanta and than the Talladega National Forest. After all, I don’t treat patients any longer and the silence I promoted while occupied there no longer forms a part of my life. I need it.
I arrived at the Sheraton after dark, checked into my room, and turned on the TV.