I've been ruminating over the supposed ephemeral nature of loss, lack and silence and I've realized that they actually hold a lot of weight. Silence in particular has a very real physical presence, and obvious paralyzing effect. There's a chaos that stems from being mute, a dizzying and desperate lack of control that comes from the inability to act or speak. If you can't penetrate the wall or reach that far off place, can't establish a connection or touch what is missed, the torment can be unbearable. But silence can also be its own defense:it makes for a potent avoidance tactic. To shut you out, to disengage. Hence there is an inherent power in silence. Silence is as essential to communication and interaction it seems, as negative space is to comprehending form.
I've contemplated to what extent 'lack' is real or imagined, internal, external or even satisfiable. The irony is that once the desperate panic and fear at the prospect of loss relents, (perhaps because the loss is realized) the resulting silence brings its own solace. Silence is both catalyst for the storm and its culminating calm. Sickness and stillness, both loathed and coveted. Lacan once theorized that a picture’s captive power derives from its impotence, that images arouse in us a desire to see what they fail to embody. I found the idea that someone could endeavor to love an echo strangely apt to my own life. Perhaps I'm unwittingly aligning myself with Orpheus! We worship voids for the promise of what if, receiving nothing. Maybe we are more in love with hope than empirical fact. Perhaps pain comes from knowing but being unable to shake the habit.
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