The silence that dialogues and embodies the mystery

We live in a civilization in which words that should be messengers of illusions have become sticky stridencies of hate and remorseless lies.

Whoever shouts the loudest, who lies with the most brazenness, finds the greatest echo and applause in the square. Speed, along with noise, are two algorithms that conquer the world today. There is no longer space or time to observe in silence, to listen to the heartbeats of the soul turned into a Cinderella in front of the royalty of the noise.

Today, young people who study little geometry, which is also philosophy, are deprived of the illusion and fantasy of hyperbole asymptotes, those lines that approach infinity without ever touching. Infinite? Incomprehensible word for a society that feeds on what is obsolete, what is disposable, what is ephemeral, what will no longer have the privilege of shining tomorrow in an antique shop.

Yes, we have plenty of words, because most of them are empty. They lack the strength and sap of metaphors and their function of being pregnant. They are no longer full of life like they were at the beginning of the world. It was the evangelist, John, who began his gospel, the most intellectual of all, with the enigmatic phrase: “In the beginning there was the word… Everything was done through it and without it nothing was done.”

Word and silence. The world, according to mythologies, was created with the conjunction of silence and words. And the word can save or destroy. It is mystery and revelation at the same time. There are words that are just knives that try to tear apart the illusion of living in a world of silences that save.

Through my work as a journalist, I had the opportunity to meet and interview several geniuses from various arts, from literature to cinema, from religion to atheism, and curiously, most of them were miserly in their words, brilliant in their silences. To cite one, I remember an interview in Rome with the filmmaker Federico Fellini, he of his immortal films. You had to extract the words with a corkscrew. He repeated that he had already said it all in his films. His silences were frightening.

Finally one day I managed to get him to give me an interview, although reluctantly. He summoned me almost at dawn in a huge, dilapidated room. He was sitting at a table that could fit all the characters in Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper. Next to him he had some blank sheets of paper on which he was drawing, while I tried to get a response from him, a series of scribbles.

I told him that I was curious to know how the titles of his films came about, for example the last one, which at that time was: “And the ship goes.” He raised his eyes, looked at me strangely and continued drawing. Finally he made up his mind and explained to me that the title did not come to him all at once, that it was germinating in him like life is generated in the womb of a woman. It was like a lightning bolt in his silence and a whispered scream, in that cold and dilapidated room that ended up filled with energy between the silences and the few words of the artist.

Art and culture in general are more silence than noise. The etymology of culture evokes the earth and its cultivation, the life that springs from it, is only silence. There is no noise or stridor in the seeds that rot and germinate in the darkness of the earth. Neither in the grass that grows, nor in the fruits that ripen in silence, without noise. Each seed, each flower on the mat of nature, each segment of a bunch of grapes, are works of art that are nourished by the silence of the sun and the song of the rain. What better art museum than a lush orchard?

Each ripe fig, pecked by birds, adorned with drops of honey is a painting that emulates the beauty of the greatest geniuses of the paintbrushes. Teresa, the saint of Ávila, loved “quiet music and sonorous solitude.” The worst noise? The one with the chains dragged by the slaves' feet. And the music better? The silence in which creativity germinates.

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