Audio Instructor

February 13, 2024

Lesson One: Let The Silence Be

<p>Silence is never true silence unless, in a space suffocated by soundproof walls, something like an anechoic chamber, you can google them. That silence is man-made. It’s forced, weighs on your ears, and might play with your psyche if you stay there too long.  </p><p>But that’s not the silence we hear when someone stops speaking. There’s a special kind of silence between people. If we allow the silence to sit in, if we don’t drown it in empty words for the sake of drowning it, we will hear an antique watch on a wall quietly ticking in another room. We will hear our own heartbeat. We will hear a landscaper blowing leaves two streets from you. No words can draw you closer than silence. </p><p>Silence is so natural, but for most of us, it feels unnatural. Things uttered or not after the silence can change your life, reveal the hidden, the obvious, something you perhaps didn’t want to touch, ever.</p><p>The silence between people implies a few things. </p><p>They are about to say something they were holding off on. </p><p>They need to collect words.</p><p>They do not want to talk with you anymore. </p><p>That’s their job to keep silent in certain situations. </p><p>They are using silence as a weapon.  </p><p>They are hunting majestic Kudu in the deserts of Kimberly, South Africa, and you are shadowing them. </p><p>Now imagine all these situations, but you are holding a microphone; your indifferent recorder is gathering someone’s dense stillness, someone’s stiff memory, someone’s overwhelming joy, someone’s crumbled words.</p><p>You are sitting close to them, in their living room, in their office, in your studio, or at a state park. </p><p>For you, that silence is precious. All of it. You do not put away the microphone. You do not say anything. You barely breathe because right after this silence, if you don’t interrupt it, the other will say something related to the core of the story. It might be a closure. It might be an opening. It might be something they never said out loud. It might be them asking you to leave. </p><p>It will be something that will teach you a new thing or two about life. It&apos;s something you’ll be thinking about on your drive home and carry around until the most subtle parts of it settle in your subconscious.</p><p>Letting the silence be is difficult. But learn to let it BE. Learn to let it be as loud as it needs to be. </p>