Month: February 2019

S

A regular feature of the Real Journeys cruise from Deep Cove, New Zealand to where Doubtful Sound meets the Abel Tasman Sea is time in Hall Arm, a small bay on the Sound. The ship turns into the inlet, pulls up beside the steep cliffs, and shuts off its engines.  The stillness is stunning, no doubt amplified by the stark difference the engine noise makes, but still complete. Passengers cooperate—no one talks or moves.

As the ship returned to the Sound, the ship’s guide said, “we often think about what’s past or what might happen in the future. Silence provides the opportunity to focus on the present.”

There is much to be said for silence. Meditation practices, religious or otherwise, often incorporate silence as a discipline, recognizing that to shut out the cacophony of daily life—to focus on the present, as the guide suggested—is hard work yet essential.  He was careful to say that silence “provides the opportunity to focus on the present.”

When we were growing up and frequenting libraries, we were cautioned to be silent in order to not disturb the concentration of others. Silence, then, became connected with serious thought and contemplation.

The Psalmist extolled a benefit of silence: “be still and know that I am God.”

Then there is the wisdom of Maurice Switzer, as quoted by Garson O’Toole in his book, “Hemingway Didn’t Say That; The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations,” often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln. “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

People of a Certain Age, have you ever heard yourself say “silence is golden?” Have you ever been in silence and a flood of thoughts about the past and musings and worries about the future crowded into your golden moment of silence? In the silence of the night, when you cannot sleep, can you use that silent time to focus only on the present?

I love the romance of the guide’s thought. If it were always true, silence would, indeed, always be golden.

Alas, life tells us otherwise.

“Silence is Golden” is the title of a hit song of 1964 by the Four Seasons, released as the “B” side for their recording of “Rag Doll,” which hit #1 on the charts. I remember liking the song then and I still do, even after I looked up the rest of the lyrics. Turns out the song is a lament, a self-criticism by the singer about his not speaking out when he sees—“but the eyes still see”—someone being wronged for fear of being called a meddler.

To be sure, the “hurt” most likely involves teenage love but some of the glitter is off the idea that silence is golden now that I know the lyrics.

I also really like “The Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel, a 1965 release. The haunting opening “hello darkness, my old friend,” and the pseudo-profundity of “and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” still transport me to our dating days during the Vietnam War and the violence in the cities when we wondered if the world would come apart of the seams. To say that “the words of the prophets were written on the subway doors” seemed so perfect to capture the sense that “the Establishment” just didn’t get it, and that a new age of “power to the people” would be the salvation of the nation.

Paul Simon wrote the lyrics. Art Garfunkel said they were meant to illustrate how people were unable to communicate effectively with each other any more, assuming that people had been good at doing so before. Given Garfunkel’s comment, the sound of silence is not an occasion for celebration. It might be interesting to ask Simon and Garfunkel to compare the times in which they first sang the song with current times in this regard.

There is another common expression involving silence that has emerged in recent times: suffering in silence.  The idea of enduring without comment could apply broadly but the more recent concern has been about those who have been abused or assaulted in childhood.  A TV ad features a local attorney, appealing to those who have been so violated to contact the attorney for help, who punctuates his message with the words “it’s not your fault.”

Silence is golden until it is not. It is not golden when one sees someone wronged, could speak out about it, and does not. It is not golden when it represents the inability of people to talk to each other. It is not golden when the silent one has been abused and made to feel responsible for the abuse.

The silence of Hall Arm in Doubtful Sound in New Zealand is golden. So is the silence in the desert at night, illuminated by the Milky Way and the other billion points of light.

As with so much in life, context matters.

Silence is golden, unless it is not.

Daniel E. White

February 24, 2019

FWe went to a rock concert a while ago. Don’t envision us with thousands at Aloha Stadium for Bruno Mars. Think a crowd of fifty in Hawaii Public Radio’s Atherton Studio for a concert by Beat-lele, a Beatles’ tribute band. They play great versions of all of the Fab Four’s music on electric ukulele.  For two hours, we bathed in the Beatles, from “Help” to “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Hey, Jude” to “I Get by with a Little Help from my Friends.”

To us in the room, the songs were friends of long-standing, remarkable signposts for our lives in the 1960s.  I remarked to the drummer (who played rhythm on a box on which he sat and two cymbals) that he looked like he was having too much fun.

“Hey, it’s the Beatles,” he replied, and I understood.

A couple of days later, we watched an old friend of a movie, “Finding Forrester,” released in 2000. It tells the story of a very bright African American teenager who meets up with a reclusive Pulitzer Prize winning author, the prize book being the only one he published.

“Forrester” is a feel-good movie, through to the rolling of the credits which roll to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, better known as Iz, Hawaii’s own, singing his version of the “Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” combo song.

“Forrester” is also a thoughtful portrayal of friendship, on many levels. Each of the main characters finds a missing piece of life as they open up to another person who, in the end, becomes a friend. No one takes more than he or she gives. 

You and I are blessed when we have such friends.  I am doubly blessed to live with what the younger set would call my BFF.

I also have a lifetime collection of friends-in-absentia. You do, too. Some of you are on the receiving end of my musings; friends from years ago and miles away who, nonetheless, are characters in the play that is my life. Just recalling playing basketball in the gym on Oregon Street in San Diego or as the “Over-The-Hill” gang in the UCR gym, cruising Oscar’s for burgers and fries in a green and white ’56 Chevy, or tasting wines in the Napa Valley with my boss and his wife one spring makes memories of old friends into friends themselves.

I confess to thinking that “friend” has been co-opted in a world of ever-present social media stimulation. (Curmudgeon alert!) Contact?  Sure. Acquaintance? Better than friend but still a bit familiar.  And to top it all off! The power to “un-friend!” In a face-to-face world, one would just stop seeing somebody. One would not consciously brand a person as “unfriended.” It sounds so cruel!

I have written before about Dad’s “adventures in friendship.” His adventures were usually unanticipated, unscripted, and often limited, in terms of the number of times he would meet the other person. I think he used the term friendship because such encounters generally involved the sharing of stories, giving each party a more-than-passing glimpse of the other’s life experiences and attitudes, face-to-face.

Sometimes a first encounter led to others with unexpected outcomes.  Dad used to go over to Grossmont Center, near home, to get coffee, write poetry, and watch people.  One adventure in friendship was with an Egyptian immigrant who managed a jewelry shop.  The man ended up renting the small apartment attached to my parents’ house until he could save enough money to get a larger place and contemplate marriage.

At his core, I think Dad would have aspired to the idea described in the last two lines of the poem that hangs, framed, on the wall in our entry.

“Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”

Like me with my friends, the Beatles and Forrester, Dad had poems and hymns that were familiar comforts sure to raise his spirits.  I daresay, People of a Certain Age, that you do, too.  In such friends there is certainty and security; no one can un-make the Beatles’ body of work or the Forrester film.

That security is important because flesh and blood, living friends can sometimes “un-friend” in an unfriendly and devastating manner.  It was “friends” of Dad’s in the one church who turned on him and split the congregation. It was a “friend” of Dad’s from their service club who persuaded Dad to place my parents’ life savings with him at his brokerage firm and proceeded to churn profits for himself, resulting in a total loss for Mom and Dad.

In the realm of friendship, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Unrequited friendship hurts.

Forrester rediscovered friendship, albeit late in his life. The Beatles have not been alone in getting by with a little help from their friends. Most of Dad’s adventures turned out well, well enough for him to look for them until he died.

There are no guarantees about friendship except, possibly, that a life without friends, be they songs or films or poems or people, would seem incomplete.

Daniel E. White

February 13, 2019