BAMBOO - Donna-Lee Phillips

QUIET

A work in progress
in which Donna-Lee Phillips
is not artist/author...
but only the still-raw surface
on which quiet may yet be.

Maybe quiet is what we are when we walk the last few kilometers on the path to the other side with someone we have been blessed to share life with. Maybe quiet is shutting the fuck up so we can hear. Maybe quiet is a sound so close to silence we will probably fail to hear it if we are not still enough.

Maybe a quiet photograph is the small, fleeting image we don't ever see while we are so busy trying to theorize or express or control. Maybe the quiet photograph is that one soft sliver of grace--of light writing--we cannot hope to see until we stop looking. A quiet photograph cannot be fixed on paper or film. It cannot be matted or framed or hung on a wall... perhaps it can be shared with another, but such sharing is often too simple for us to appreciate.

Maybe I will live long enough to hear quiet, and to see quiet. All it requires is that I let go... that I accept... that I am open... that I remain still enough... remain still long enough... remain still far longer than I imagine I can without saying or doing SOMETHING. Empty does not require filling. Silence does not need sound, a blank surface does not need to be marked.

When I first tried to make my page here, I had something to say. I kept revising and reworking and trying to explain, and I believed that was what was required. The reason my page has remained vacant so long is that I didn't get it.

Quiet is nothing. Doing, thinking, being absolutely nothing... only when I learn to sit without trying to MAKE quiet, will quiet come to me.

Every path is different. My birthday is 2 November--in many of my ancestral cultures, Dias de Los Muertos--the Day of the Dead. It seems that I am meant to be one who walks with the dying on those last steps of the journey. And what is needed of me is to be quiet. To hear quiet. To see quiet. To simply be, and be with.

The first time I walked there, I thought it would be painful and sad and difficult. The first time I still clung to the illusion that I had to FILL the quiet with something... But words, images, gestures are not needed. There are no conventions, no rules, no consolations or reassurances. All I have to do is be there, and be quiet.

The poet Octavio Paz wrote "Memory is not that which we remember, but that which remembers us." Quiet is not that which we see or hear, but that which sees or hears us.

My entire professional (or pre-accident) life was spent trying to construct sounds and images to make sense out of the vastness of life, and earn my place as a human being. After my accident, Ed Heckerman said "There are no accidents, only intentions we have not yet recognized." Another friend told me "A weed is only a plant we have not yet learnt to value."

In my auditory/cognitive system, I have not had a moment of silence since March 1984, when my life as it was ended. My brain is so desperate to fill the void where it was damaged that it virtually drowns me in sounds both painful and utterly without harmony or meaning. All sound batters me with equal force. The name for this, if it is to be considered a disease or dysfunction, is "tinnitus". How is the word pronounced? TIN-EYE-TUS or TIN-IT-IS? No one in the world of Western medicine knows, nor do they have any idea how to make the sounds stop.

Perhaps I have always had the answer, but did not know its intention, or its value. When I cease struggling against the TIN EYE TUS... when I finally learn to let go of the notion of control... when I can sit still long enough to let quiet into my ears, my eyes, my mouth... in through the pores of my skin and the marrow of my bones... then I will have nothing to say about quiet, because it will say itself. When I shut up long enough to hear and see quiet, which is so silent and so nerely invisible that I might have spent my whole life on this path and never realized that it was I, only me, who made such an infernal racket I could not hear or see... and there is no difference to me... quiet.

If there were a way I could leave this page blank but not empty, a way I could say what I am learning without images or words, I would have done so. But even to me there would have been nothing on the page, and I would have failed. Can I hear and see this page as full of quiet?

Perhaps...

Donna-Lee Phillips



	Donna-Lee Phillips

	***
QUIET A work in progress in which Donna-Lee Phillips is not artist/author... but only the still-raw surface on which quiet may yet be. Maybe quiet is what we are when we walk the last few kilometers on the path to the other side with someone we have been blessed to share life with. Maybe quiet is shutting the fuck up so we can hear. Maybe quiet is a sound so close to silence we will probably fail to hear it if we are not still enough. Maybe a quiet photograph is the small, fleeting image we don't ever see while we are so busy trying to theorize or express or control. Maybe the quiet photograph is that one soft sliver of grace--of light writing--we cannot hope to see until we stop looking. A quiet photograph cannot be fixed on paper or film. It cannot be matted or framed or hung on a wall... perhaps it can be shared with another, but such sharing is often too simple for us to appreciate. Maybe I will live long enough to hear quiet, and to see quiet. All it requires is that I let go... that I accept... that I am open... that I remain still enough... remain still long enough... remain still far longer than I imagine I can without saying or doing SOMETHING. Empty does not require filling. Silence does not need sound, a blank surface does not need to be marked. When I first tried to make my page here, I had something to say. I kept revising and reworking and trying to explain, and I believed that was what was required. The reason my page has remained vacant so long is that I didn't get it. Quiet is nothing. Doing, thinking, being absolutely nothing... only when I learn to sit without trying to MAKE quiet, will quiet come to me. Every path is different. My birthday is 2 November--in many of my ancestral cultures, Dias de Los Muertos--the Day of the Dead. It seems that I am meant to be one who walks with the dying on those last steps of the journey. And what is needed of me is to be quiet. To hear quiet. To see quiet. To simply be, and be with. The first time I walked there, I thought it would be painful and sad and difficult. The first time I still clung to the illusion that I had to FILL the quiet with something... But words, images, gestures are not needed. There are no conventions, no rules, no consolations or reassurances. All I have to do is be there, and be quiet. The poet Octavio Paz wrote "Memory is not that which we remember, but that which remembers us." Quiet is not that which we see or hear, but that which sees or hears us. My entire professional (or pre-accident) life was spent trying to construct sounds and images to make sense out of the vastness of life, and earn my place as a human being. After my accident, Ed Heckerman said "There are no accidents, only intentions we have not yet recognized." Another friend told me "A weed is only a plant we have not yet learnt to value." In my auditory/cognitive system, I have not had a moment of silence since March 1984, when my life as it was ended. My brain is so desperate to fill the void where it was damaged that it virtually drowns me in sounds both painful and utterly without harmony or meaning. All sound batters me with equal force. The name for this, if it is to be considered a disease or dysfunction, is "tinnitus". How is the word pronounced? TIN-EYE-TUS or TIN-IT-IS? No one in the world of Western medicine knows, nor do they have any idea how to make the sounds stop. Perhaps I have always had the answer, but did not know its intention, or its value. When I cease struggling against the TIN EYE TUS... when I finally learn to let go of the notion of control... when I can sit still long enough to let quiet into my ears, my eyes, my mouth... in through the pores of my skin and the marrow of my bones... then I will have nothing to say about quiet, because it will say itself. When I shut up long enough to hear and see quiet, which is so silent and so nerely invisible that I might have spent my whole life on this path and never realized that it was I, only me, who made such an infernal racket I could not hear or see... and there is no difference to me... quiet. If there were a way I could leave this page blank but not empty, a way I could say what I am learning without images or words, I would have done so. But even to me there would have been nothing on the page, and I would have failed. Can I hear and see this page as full of quiet? Perhaps... Donna-Lee Phillips
***
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