This is my silent space: my bedroom after dusk when the kids are in bed and I can have some time alone to meditate, journal, think.
“When he heard music, he no longer listened to the notes, but the silences between. When he read a book, he gave himself over to the commas and semicolons, to the space after the period before the capital letter of the next sentence. He discovered the places in the room where silence gathered; the folds of curtain drapes, the deep bowls of family silver. When people spoke to him, he heard less and less of what they said and and more and more of what they were not.”
– Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
– Maya Angelou, Gather Together in my Name
At the round table discussion with teachers, Dionne, and artist-in-residence Bryan Moss, we talked about how shape and negative space in the pieces from the After Picasso exhibition at the Wexner Center could be used as inspiration to discuss writing and the conscious use of silence, space, and the unsaid in poetry and prose.
The above quotes could be used as beginning inspiration. In addition, here is a post called “Silence that Transforms Us.” In it, I write about silence in the classroom, and it includes a couple of really good links for more information on silence in conversation in order to listen, silence as an “endangered species,” and the disappearance of natural soundscapes because of human noise polluting the landscape. Slightly tangential, but could maybe be used in some creative way.
-Brandi Lust