24.

It’s common in music to have an absence of sound. It is an adventure listening to the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven…da, da, da, daa…but it is the cesur, the pauses between the notes—the silence between the noises of the instruments—which are my favourite. That’s when I am stirred awake.

Science has shown that such intervals are what generate the intense, positive neural activity that we experience. That is my experience as well. It’s not only the notes. It is Beethoven’s sudden silences that stir the mind and create a spark in your head. He understood that when we are exposed to silence, our minds and thoughts expand outwards. Miles Davis, the trumpet player and poet of loneliness, understood this too. In a musical genre full of festivity and extroversion, Davis became respected for the dramatic silences in his performances: the notes he chose not to play were as meaningful as those he did. At the end of his concerts, when the music ended, there was a sudden moment of silence before the applause. It felt as if your brain shifted gears.

Beethoven, as is well known, eventually went completely deaf. This development liberated a deep originality within him and a spirit of freedom. He composed his Ninth Symphony using the sounds existing solely within his head. During the premiere of the piece, he stood with his back to the audience in order to conduct the orchestra. After the music was over, he had to turn around to see whether the audience was clapping or booing. Not only were they clapping, their enthusiasm and cheers were so overwhelming that the Vienna police had to be called to restore peace and order.

Late in his life, Beethoven composed works that were too advanced for the audiences attending his concerts. Beethoven’s pieces for string quartet were so modern that his contemporaries believed the music must be the result of an old man’s madness. A hundred years later, when they were listened to again, the Beethoven quartets were hailed as masterpieces.

The composer John Cage, in his “Lecture on Nothing,” which has been an inspiration to me, cited the composer Claude Debussy on his method of composing: “I take all the tones there are, leave out the ones I don’t want, and use all the others.” After that, Cage removed all of the tones in his piece 4′ 33″ and created his silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audiences adore this piece of silence even today. Or rather: the silence minus the noises that the audience makes as they try to stay quiet.

Cage had many deep intellectual thoughts about silence; it’s worthwhile listening to him on YouTube. But I tend to think about silence as a practical method for uncovering answers to the intriguing puzzle that is yourself, and for helping to gain new perspective on whatever is hiding beyond the horizon.

You can also listen through your jaw. After the inventor Thomas Edison, who was also deaf, came up with the phonograph, the predecessor to the record player, he had to lean over the player and bite hard into the woodwork that comprised the edge of the apparatus. That way he was able to feel the vibrations through his jaws. “I bite my teeth in the wood good and hard and then I get it good and strong,” he said. As well as being his sole method of feeling his own invention, it was the only way he could enjoy the music.