One of the MANY things I love about living in the Midwest is the radio stations around this time of year. I was thinking more of Halloween but I forgot today was Friday the 13th!
They tend to do themed playlists centered around the season, Halloween for sure. This morning is GLOOMY. I mean in sight, but not a drop predicted.
This morning on 97.1 the drive we listened to the 7:30 Song challenge. Where they play snippets of seven Classic Rock songs. And the caller has to guess the songs within 30 seconds with one pass. MOST of the time people get close to seven. Rarely does someone miss all of them. But today, was that day. The guy was a bust on the first song, Summer of ‘69. I mean, even I knew that one! On my way back they played Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper. And it was perfect timing. The streets were mostly empty. At times you’d see a pair of children waiting at the bus stop sticking out in their bright colors, a respite from the murkiness. Leaves blowing across the street. A scene from Halloween (1978.) And it called to mind how easy it can be sometimes to write something scary if you notice the horror in the ordinary. It is there. It is just a matter of how you process it. Those small silences, a darkened window, another window with nothing but a solitary lamp keeping vigil, a dead end street branching out to a dead street, a grandmother, and her grandson waiting on the bus. What if the grandchild were a ghost? Or the grandmother turning into a zombie? What if the bus never arrives?
Sometimes silence is just that. But also a pause, a lull, a slowing. We can forget sometimes the difference even 60 seconds makes. For me, it may be less traffic, more speeders, an accident, and more kids on more corners waiting for more school buses. A man with his ear to a tree, a boy going in the opposite direction of his school.
Silence is also menacing. It is mood setting. It holds anxieties, regrets, resentments, hatred, fear, plots, in its thickness. There is a reason for the calm before the storm. And I am here for it.
“I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen
“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.”
― Leonora Carrington
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals
“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”
― Robert Lynd
“In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter