{"id":79304,"date":"2016-09-12T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T11:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=79304"},"modified":"2016-09-11T15:32:53","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T14:32:53","slug":"the-sound-of-silence-an-illustrated-serenade-to-the-art-of-listening-to-ones-inner-voice-amid-the-noise-of-modern-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/the-sound-of-silence-an-illustrated-serenade-to-the-art-of-listening-to-ones-inner-voice-amid-the-noise-of-modern-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sound of Silence: An Illustrated Serenade to the Art of Listening to One\u2019s Inner Voice amid the Noise of Modern Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tender reminder that silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of an inward-listening awareness.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"soundofsilence\"<\/a>\u201cThere are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout,\u201d<\/em> Henry David Thoreau observed in contemplating how silence ennobles speech<\/a>. A year earlier, he had written in his journal<\/a>: \u201cI wish to hear the silence of the night, for the silence is something positive and to be heard.\u201d<\/em> It\u2019s a sentiment of almost unbearable bittersweetness today, a century and a half later, as we find ourselves immersed in a culture that increasingly mistakes loudness for authority, vociferousness for voice, screaming for substance. We seem to have forgotten what Susan Sontag reminded us half a century ago \u2014 that \u201csilence remains, inescapably, a form of speech,\u201d<\/a> that it has its own aesthetic, and that learning to wield it is among the great arts of living.<\/p>\n

Of the nine kinds of silence<\/a> that Sontag\u2019s contemporary and friend Paul Goodman outlined, \u201cthe fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul\u201d is the kind we seem to have most hastily forsaken \u2014 and yet it is also the one we most urgently need if we are to reclaim the aesthetic of silence in the art of living.<\/p>\n

That ennobling, endangered kind of silence is what writer Katrina Goldsaito<\/strong> and illustrator Julia Kuo<\/strong> celebrate in The Sound of Silence<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 the story of a little boy named Yoshio, who awakens to the elusive beauty of silence amid Tokyo\u2019s bustle and teaches himself its secret language.<\/p>\n

\"soundofsilence22-1-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Conceptually, the book is a trans-temporal counterpart to In Praise of Shadows<\/em><\/a> \u2014 that magnificent 1933 serenade to ancient Japanese aesthetics, lamenting how excessive illumination obscures so many of life\u2019s most beautiful dimensions, just as today\u2019s excessive noise silences life\u2019s subtlest and most beautiful signals.<\/p>\n

Goldsaito\u2019s lyrical writing, part ballad and part haiku, and Kuo\u2019s illustrations, midway between manga and Chris Ware<\/a> yet thoroughly original, carry the story with effortless poetic enchantment.<\/p>\n

\"soundofsilence1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To continue reading please Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tender reminder that silence is not the absence of sound but the presence of an inward-listening awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}