In my two years participating in men's chorus I have learned of the most beautiful sound that can ever be created by the human voice. It was not what I expected it to be, and anyone can make it. Don’t take this as being some kind of cheap life-hack, it’s not like those six-pack-shortcuts or get-rich-quick schemes. No one becomes a great singer without years and years of practice. But the most beautiful sound of all can be made by anyone, with no training required. That isn’t to say it’s easy either, for no amount of training can teach you to create it. This is the only sound uttered by human lips that is closer than any other sound to reaching the divine, and it is the most strange, beautiful, otherworldly sound you are likely to ever hear.
The sound I am speaking of is silence. Like I said before, this is not a life-hack, and it is not easy. You have not made the sound just by clamping your mouth shut and saying nothing. Just because anyone can do it doesn’t mean any kind of silence will do. There is more than one kind of silence. Take, for instance, the difference between sitting alone in your car with the windows shut versus sitting on top of a mountain beyond the earshot of the rivers and roads. If you have been in both situations, you will understand how they can sound exactly the same and yet infinitely different. If you were to record the two sounds, you would not be able to tell which was which, but you would know it if you were there. Every silence has a different personality. In The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster explains to us all the different kinds of silence:
“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”
The most beautiful silence of all is strictly a musical one, and I will call it the Selah. Selah is a Hebrew word that appears multiple times in the Psalms, and scholars have never really agreed on what it is besides some kind of musical direction. Many think that it is a kind of interlude, or pause. You may experience the Selah in a Christmas church service, when an a cappella group pauses between two lines, or in the split second between the last note and the applause. The melody builds and builds to one sustained note, until the director gives them signal to stop. The sound of all those sedimentary harmonies intertwining with one another is undeniably beautiful, but I believe that the most haunting part of the piece is the moment the sound stops. For a split second you can hear the echo of their voices ringing out over the empty air, diminishing so rapidly that you hardly have a chance to appreciate it. You can never get that sound unless you stop singing, and it never lasts long once you stop. And as the echo dissipates, you hear another sound: the sound of a hundred people temporarily suspended in awe.
A composer named John Cage tried to capture it once when he composed the piece “four minutes, thirty-three seconds.” The only musical direction is that the performers do not play their instruments for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Unfortunately, this composition cannot produce the Selah; it only produces the fidgety silence of people wondering whether it is appropriate to clear their throat. The Selah is not an awful sound, but awe-full sound, and it can only be made in the space between two notes. But the space is not empty. It is filled with an emotion that cannot be described without sound and yet cannot be described by the sound itself. It is not really a rest as much as it is an invisible note. Mozart himself believed this when he wrote: "the music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”
I said earlier that this sound is closer than any other sound to reaching the divine. When we try to imagine the presence of God, we typically imagine thunder, lightning, shining robes, etc. But in the Old Testament, the presence of God is often depicted by silence. The Holiest of Holies is the quietest place in the tabernacle. Remember Elijah approaching the mountain of the Lord:
“And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:
And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.” -1 Kings 19:11-12
It is interesting that the author repeats that fact with such precision. The Lord was not in the wind. He was not in the earthquake. He was not in the fire. The Lord was in the silence, the caesura, the Selah.
Sometimes I wonder whether the real appeal of the epic sagas and other long elaborate works of art is merely the expectation of achieving a particular kind of nothingness. For some reason it is worth traveling to the ends of the earth or listening endlessly to escalating symphonic music to reach that one moment when you hear absolutely nothing. When I was in speech and debate, my speech coach would always tell me “your silence says more than your words.” As it turns out, that’s true in more ways than one.
