There is of course both pros and cons of being silent. Silence is golden, they say, but from another viewpoint being ignored is deafening and hurtful. When I started this year by making 9 resolutions I did start with being silent, or mostly silent though. Silence as an act of recilliance agaist the everpresent sounds of the world we made. The silence I propose is an attentive silence. A silence of sounds that are not purposefully placed there. Not the music from my daily generated playlists on spotify but maybe the music from a radio afar that someone forgot to turn off when they rushed of to work. Not the conversations in podcasts on subjects that I am interested in but maybe the conversation between magpies and jackdaws on the topic of whos is that piece of apple? Not the hammering of keystrokes, the punching of the clock or the beating of the drum but the whisp of wind and hum of bumblebees.

I don’t believe in new year resolutions. Even if we actually strive towards that which we resolutely promise ourselves, what we get is the possibility of failure.  I don’t believe in failure. Instead, I sat a while in the days leading up to that arbitrary date that we celebrate as the old leaving and the new beginning. I sat a while considering the things I like in my life, that make me feel good and that I if I happened to do more of would make my life ever so slightly better.

And as one of the things I really treasure is silence my first resolution was to be mostly silent. I guess I already am, my silence mostly interrupted by the conversations with my family and the work I do at Malmö University, both in class with students and outside class with colleagues. But as a teacher most of my work is planning classes and examining students work. No need for conversation there. And my family all share this need of alone time. That doesn’t say we dislike eachothers company just that for each instance of interaction we take two instances of alonetime. Drawing doodles, writing stories, playing games or just devouring online content in an all-devouring maelstrom of the internet.

There is of course both pros and cons of being silent. Silence is golden, they say, but from another viewpoint the absence of response is ignorance. Ignorance being both deafening and hurtful. So, for clarity, the silence I talk about is not the absence of conversation (conversation is an absolute necessity) I’m talking about silence as an act of resilience against the everpresent sounds of the world we made. The silence I propose is an attentive silence. A silence of sounds that are not purposefully placed there. Not the music from my daily generated playlists on Spotify but maybe the music from a radio afar that someone forgot to turn off when they rushed off to work. Not the conversations in podcasts on subjects that I am interested in but maybe the conversation between magpies and jackdaws on the topic of whose is that piece of apple? Not the hammering of keystrokes, the punching of the clock or the beating of the drum but the whisp of wind and hum of bumblebees.

Vildmarken är ståtlig som vanligt, och fridfull och oändlig som tystnaden själv.

Dan Andersson Ur ett brev 1916 till Märta Larsson

I’m romanticising of course. But the absence of sound in one moment gives us more focus on the presence of sound in the next. If we really want to listen, we need to give attention to the one we are listening to. And if we give all our attention away to the commerce and buzz of the attention economy, what do we have left?

For me that means I retreat into silence. You might have more attention to give, or might not want to listen to the silence. You might like an ongoing conversation and idle chatter. I don’t. I vow to be; Mostly silent.