I either have nothing to say to somebody or everything. I’ve written Tolstoy-length novels in my head of what I’d say to you; in my mind you’d listen. What is to blame for our era’s silences, is it web3, or web2, or Royal Mail, or FedEx, or Bell—the printing press, the Princely House of Thurn und Taxis, literacy itself? That we could in fact read and write, we could speak, we could share, respond, enquire, and so when we don’t it feels like the deepest form of silence.
Some people I want to speak to for years, I have time to chest up all that I would say, and we read, respond, ask questions from time to time, and the rest, the rest feels like it’s silence.
The widths of the world are stretches of silence, it’s not space but time; I prevail sometimes hurt, sometimes hopeful, mostly forgetful. And somewhere someone waits the same way for my answer, and my scatterbrain outbox feels like betrayal, like silence.
And on some nights I choke with all this wordlessness, that I could but I can’t speak my mind or, when it’s my turn, listen. There’s a distance between texts here and I do mind, a crisis of exegesis, the syntaxes wish to be intertwined; I either say everything or else it is silence. When the world falls open it can also fall silent. Now it’s night over here and we wait for our turn to talk.