IN A SILENT WAY - Loudly, that is

The sound starts with a little crackle, some pops and hissing.
This is pre digital era, and the sound comes
from the LP of the prince of darkness himself.

It is Miles Davis’ IN A SILENT WAY. John McLaughlin’s guitar carries the initial melody and Herbie Hancock brings a phased-stoned fender Rhodes into a boil.  Mr. Davis horn comes, not with all out attack but with a soft spoken statement.  Let that not deceive the listener, though.  Miles’ silence may mean different from the man behind the horn.

It brings me back the first time I listened to the Josef Zawinul (July 7, 1932 – September 11, 2007) original
(the version posted in this account’s Rock Jazz tracks) version. I always had a scene in mind as I hear the track.
The piece haunts. It probes my then young mind  -

I can see someone (I’ll call him Daggett) who, now near midnight, went to a place not that far away from home. Perhaps atop a cliff, and while the rest of the mere mortals cavort in dreamland, Daggett meets face to face with the Dream giver Himself. Or is in a state where dreams are indeed made. More like the biblical transfiguration, a bit enigmatic, a bit fuzzy, but totally overwhelming experience. Like Moses in the 
presence of the Almighty. Or an alien abduction.

Time stands to a still and suddenly, Daggett finds himself alone. He goes down to catch a few hours of sleep before dear Mr. Sun smiles the twilight away. Morning comes. Nobody believes Daggett, or the encounter he had. And after a week of trying to tell everyone what he went through, he retires the experience to himself, 
in silence.

Poor Daggett.

As the track rolls on, IN A SILENT WAY has triggered me into thinking how golden silence is indeed. Mr. Davis has stood by it - five billion notes were pouring from the bebop university, he retorts with short musical statements, spurts, and ambiguous phrases which left marks and dents as potent as any Marshall Stack could have.

29 years later, I still get the same feeling listening to IN A SILENT WAY.

Things have changed a lot since, but now it has come to me that not every form of silence should be equated with bliss and peace. SILENCE from Mr. Davis may have been a defiant move amidst the barrage of the bebop movement, yet as you look in the album sleeve, Miles gazes upward – he sees something we can not. And to stare at nothing is to stare at everything. Vis-à-vis the classic marketing adage “When everything is emphasized, nothing is emphasized”, it begins to make sense.

To hear nothing leads you to hear everything.

To hear silence teaches us to listen closely for everything.
At 33, you understand that Silence never meant nonexistence in the first place. Growing up with a creative soul for a father (musician/artist whom I love dearly and owe a lot with), it’s amazing to live with someone who can go on with life with just speaking three sentences a day.
No more, no less. It must have been the ganja,
or the harmonies he alone can hear within.

In these darkest of times, silence can speak of death. Beneath the sealed coffin is silence so black - incapable of sensing, eternally deaf and mute, unable to communicate. That’s why it makes sense to communicate as long as there’s breath, and as long as there is a living recipient of the message.  The dead don’t talk back, more so react. I don’t see the point of eulogies - where tears roll down and words of praises are generously served to a stiff cadaver. Apologies for the coldness of the words, yet in eternity, our words have no bearing – where only the Living Word can bridge the great divide. Had these words were given when the recipient was capable of response, a lot could have gone a long way.

It could have lifted up a broken spirit, cheered a dying heart or creased a smile to a stolid countenance.

Worse, Silence may be playing dead – like your old dog lying down with tongue out, as you say “Play dead, Skip”. And what we just don’t know is, when the torpor ceases, WHO – or WHAT will wake up: a smiling kid or a behemoth on the loose. More like the silence before the storm, the lull before the next eruption. If done deliberately, such silence becomes the herald of death – like your average battlefield ambush.

 Just as the line “It’s too silent in the trenches” is spoken, the enemy appears in throngs.

Mr. Zawinul and Mr. Davis may not have purposed the above morbid impressions, but again, when nothing is said, a million things may be deduced.

Sometimes silence isn’t always golden.
 

The SILENT WAY is not the only way.

Nothing comes worse than getting dead silence after an hour's presentation
in a meeting - and getting a million feedback from people who were not even present - the following day.

And then, Faith comes by hearing and hearing, the word of God.

Could the Father have chosen the silent way, and withheld the Word (logos - which was made flesh), we’d all be doomed to damnation and into an eternity forgotten in silence.

In Pace Requiscat. Much thanks to Josef Zawinul and Miles Davis.




(Originally written in 2008 by Tiano BM)