Awoke this morning to the sound of light static on my clock radio. Thought that maybe KQED had gone dead — that sort of thing happens every so often — but then the announcer’s voice came on, explaining that we were “listening to a moment of silence”, at the 9/11 commemoration in New York City.
Odd thought, listening to silence. Well, I’ve listened to John Cage’s 4’33” a number of times (see “The 4:33 project”, here), and that’s more than a moment of silence.
(Googling on {“listening to a moment of silence”} seems to pull up nothing but references to people listening to songs called “A Moment of Silence”, which is something quite different.)
The ceremonies went on, and I fled to my iTunes, eventually getting caught up in listening to music about Babylon (for reasons I’ll explain in another posting). Oh yes, and adding some more XXX-rated collages to my XBlog (“Collages: the dog series”, here, and “Collages: two snapshots (Eric and Bud)”, here). Life goes on.
September 11, 2011 at 2:38 pm |
A moment of violence begets a moment of silence.
A boss many years ago grudgingly tolerated moments of silence that his employees had requested for whatever reason. He would end the moment by saying,
“It’s a moment, not a minute. Let’s get back to work.”
September 11, 2011 at 3:11 pm |
I certainly don’t begrudge moments of silence. I was just struck by the idea of listening to silence, though of course that’s just what you do with Cage’s 4’33”.