Radio Netherlands’ Earth Beat interviews this week on noise and silence caught my attention because I, as Sara Maitland says, “hunger” for silence, embrace it whenever I can; and am amazed at others’ fear of silence, their feasting on noise.
“In the summer of 2000 I moved north to County Durham, to a house on a moor high about Weardale,” Maitland writes —
I wanted both to be silent and to think about silence. I set out to hunt silence and I have been doing so ever since.”Sara Maitland uses Edwin Muir’s words in Scottish Journey (1935) to describe her place of silence on the moors.
“There was no sign of life, except for a few distant sheep nibbling the harsh tufts of grass that grew here and there among the heather; even the birds did not seem to come here, and the only sound I heard was one of a lark singing high up.
“The thin air was sweetened by a thousand scents rising into it from every tuft in these miles of moorland, mingling as they rose, so that one seemed to be breathing in the landscape itself, drinking it in with all one's senses except that of hearing, which was magically stilled.
“The silence of such places is so complete that it sinks into one's mind in waves, making it clearer and clearer, drenching it as with a potion concocted out of some positive life-giving essence, not out of the mere absence of sound.
“In that silence the moor was a living thing spreading its fleece of purple and brown and green to the sun.”
Scot Sara Maitland wrote A Book of Silence. This week Radio Netherlands Worldwide aired an interview with her. Earlier this year, a “Quotes and Musings” blogger quoted from Maitland’s Silence.
“The silence was pure. Down in the camp, all the sounds were precise breaks in the silence.” Distinct. Separate from each other. No ambient sound. No background. Just noises laid on to the silence — like pebbles on a still pond [but] not like that because there were no outspreading ripples; just a single sound … Round like a stone — and then the silence returned unbroken, each individual noise carrying clearly, but without any ‘residue’. Sounds seemed to alight quite gently on the silence — and the silence gobbled them up, or swallowed them down.
“It was absolutely still. Absolutely silent. The desert night was not very dark, the sky was deep — the stars actually ‘twinkled’. I had a sense of their distance — some are nearer, seem nearer, as well as larger or brighter. The sky was not a black ceiling but an infinite recession. In the night, the starlit silence, the time, the distance — the infinite. Yet underneath my hand when I reached out from the sleeping bag, the sand was made of tiny grains, very cool and clean, fine- textured, soft against my fingers. It was probably the most profound silence I had ever engaged. This intensity of silence I had come to listen to…”
Sources and notes
“Passage from Sara Maitland’s Silence,” quotes and musings, January 7, 2010,
http://quotesandmusings.blogspot.com/2010/01/passage-from-sara-maitlands-silence.html
Maitland
Writer, gardener and keeper of silence Sara Maitland was born (1950) and grew up in London and South West Scotland; she studied English at Oxford University and “discovered feminism, socialism, Christianity and friendship, which have proved the bedrock in [her] adult life.” She writes “about women and the entangled emotions of terror and beauty.”
Sara Maitland built a house, in recent years, on a wild moor in northern Galloway, her nearest neighbors Barn Owls in a ruined barn. For the past ten years she has lived alone “pursuing a deep and joyful fascination with silence” [http://www.saramaitland.com/About_Me.html].
Sara Maitland’s A Book of Silence
Exploring what silence might mean in 21st century, what effects it has on people, how it has been used and understood in the past, why we are frightened of it, and why she has come to love it so much— Sara Maitland’ book documents that adventure mixing a deeply personal, intellectually exciting personal journey and cultural history. Researching and writing A Book of Silence took Maitland further into silence: on Skye in the Hebrides, in the Sinai Desert, in forests and mountains, in a flotation tank; in monasteries and libraries [http://www.saramaitland.com/Silence.html].
A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland. London: Granta, 2008; Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009.
“In the summer of 2000 I moved north to County Durham, to a house on a moor high about Weardale. I was eager and greedy. I wanted both to be silent and to think about silence. I set out to hunt silence and I have been doing so ever since.”
Maitland this week on Radio Netherlands Worldwide
“The silent life — Sara Maitland lives on her own and chooses a life filled with silence. She says it gives her more time, sharpens her other senses and focuses her mind. We ask her if she’s missing out on a social life” [Earth Beat — The Noise Show, http://www.rnw.nl/english/radioshow/noise-show].
Galloway, Scotland
Galloway (traditional region) sits in southwestern Scotland, comprising the historic counties of Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire, which form the central and western portions of Dumfries and Galloway council area. Galloway is bounded by the historic county of Ayrshire (council areas of South Ayrshire and East Ayrshire) on the north, the historic county of Dumfriesshire on the east, the Solway Firth and Irish Sea on the southeast, and the North Channel on the southwest.
Galloway’s economy is predominantly pastoral in the lowlands, based on dairy farming of the indigenous hornless Galloway cattle. Forests have been planted on the moor areas above 500 feet (150 meters) in elevation. The Galloway Hydro-Electric Scheme (1935) harnessed the waters of the Rivers Dee and Ken for the generation of hydroelectricity. Tourism plays an important economic role [Britannica note].
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]
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