The Rest is Silence

My life as a musician began when I was 4. My paternal grandfather, a violinist, had died, and I missed hearing him play. I asked for violin lessons, and my parents encouraged me to play. I later added French horn, bassoon, and voice. I listened to music most of the day and often listened to music as I was trying to sleep. I generally had some song running through my head, even when nothing was playing in the air.

In 2011, when I got meningitis, my brain did a reset. My memory unit is not what it once was – I used to be able to remember conversations verbatim from throughout the course of my entire life. No more. But my auditory memory is still quite strong. It’s easily the strongest part of my brain. Because of this I began to notice that sometimes a random song would encroach upon my meditation and prayer time. Often it would be songs that I had heard in the grocery store earlier. Sometimes it would be a piece I had performed 100 years ago. Either way, it would be disruptive to my brain’s need for silence.

I began to work harder on custody of my mind. When in the grocery store, I can tune out the music that is playing if I concentrate on my prayers and my shopping list. If I am with someone else at the store, I can also focus on them and their needs. Shopping can, after all, be stressful. As people routinely ignore one another, I’m appalled at the lack of greetings and eye contact every time I leave the house. But anyway, realizing that I *can* ignore music in public has been very helpful. Yes, I can still technically hear it playing, but by not hearing it, it does not encroach on my consciousness. 

My younger daughter, Veronica, has been a professional musician for over three years now. Nearly the only time I intentionally listen to music is when she plays or when I am helping her find new repertoire. She is the queen of the nursing home circuit in Saint Louis, and so much of what she plays is old-time, gentle music for her favorite audience. Listening to her play is a pleasure, in part because of the purity and beauty of her voice, but also because she never performs anything that even teeters on the cusp of inappropriate in any way. She is always seeking to perform music that ennobles and fosters joy, never anything that creates hostility or sadness. I think at least in part because of the gentleness of her soul and musical choices, working with her on her music has not made the silence I require for prayer more difficult.

For several years I have attended a Mass that does not feature music, not even chant. Yes, it’s a low Mass, and I know some traditionalists think that we should not have the low Mass option on Sundays. For those of us whose souls crave silence, though, it is a tremendous blessing. I can truly enter into the presence of God in the peaceful quiet in a way that I could not even if the music were brilliant. Crying babies, coughing, or other human sounds do not disturb my soul anymore, but music often does.

I heard recently that one of the mystics said that heaven is very much like floating in an ocean of God’s love. I love that image, only partly because I adore water and floating in it. Floating is another way to have silence. One can hear some in the water, but not as acutely as through the air. In the water my senses are both more calm and more acute.

Something I have noticed since turning off the stereo in my head for several years is that my relationship with music has completely changed. I used to really enjoy a wide range of music and even find some ghastly things entertaining. When I hear a song that I used to enjoy, quite often I find it not particularly meaningful anymore. My pleasure in music that is merely fun is pretty much gone. I also notice that most of what I used to enjoy isn’t particularly good. I don’t mean technically. Every genre of music features some musicians who are quite skilled at their craft. Ricky Scaggs, John Paul Jones, Robert Fripp, Chet Atkins, and the list goes on of those who have honed their craft admirably. But since every piece of media in my life now for several years has been evaluated through the lens of “does this bring me closer to or further away from God,” most music, including most classical music, does not do the former. Nothing is neutral. It either reminds me of my role in salvation history, or it is distracting me. I never wish to be distracted.

My family was recently talking about Shakespeare’s tragedies. The thrust of the conversation isn’t’ important here, but it reminded me of Hamlet’s final line, “the rest is silence.” While the standard interpretation of this line is the silence of death, recently it has inspired in me another meaning. If we think of rest in temporal terms, we think of peace, calm, and sleep. If I think of silence as my inner silence regardless of the sounds going on around me, then I realize that the rest is silence. I can have inner peace because I have achieved a kind of inner silence, a kind of inner calm that allows Christ to be present in me in a way he could not be when I was filled with noise. So the rest that I now have is because of the silence I now have. The rest is silence.