visual silence

summarizing silence is such an impossible thing to summarize for me. to create a single image to encompass all that silence is or can be makes me think of how Claudia Rankine describes “I” - a pronoun that barely holds so much detail when put under scrutiny, a word that has so much power that it’s overwhelming. 

for the sake of creating a summarizing dichotomy, i decided on “true” silence, or silencing, or nonconsensual silence 

[[  the figure, whether or not this is intended, seems somewhat skeletal to me: pale, thin but to the point of giving several bony details… this type of silence is consuming, is painful — no,

is pain

is fear

is violent

is death  ]]

 

and also on personal silence, on quietude, on consensual silence, chosen silence.

[[ the partial panoramic gives a first person view of a scene of gently running water in a gently wooded area, so that the viewer can see a scene that one might call, perhaps stereotypically, peaceful, what with its somewhat robust growth, clear waters running water, a lack of lack of busy-ness, and life and death occurring naturally. ]]