Nemeton High Green Tech Magazine. Vol. 4

The quality of the silence Many years ago some German friends invited me to take part in a seminar held in a tiny village in the mountains on the French-German border. So small was the village that there were no cars: it had just a few houses and a huge abandoned glass plant, where our workshops were held. The day after my arrival I had a sensation I was not able to define. There was something that made that place unique and it was not the buildings, the marvellous forests surrounding the village, nor my hosts' perfect hospitality.
Only after a few days was I able to realize that the unknown, deep sensation of well-being I was experiencing originated from the quality of the silence in which that fragment of the world was immersed. Just as everyone else, I too was no stranger to brief escapes from that contemporary deafening world of ours, but it was the first time that my closing off was so prolonged and uninterrupted. My thoughts and actions managed to originate, grow, develop and reveal themselves without external distractions. Suddenly I realized the meaning of the saying "if you don't like something you can always try to close your eyes, but not your ears". The previous century has left us with an unwanted legacy that goes unnoticed, often because of our relying on eyes as main instrument for exploring the world. There were times in which the truth remained in the world of sounds; today priority is given to what we see, and rightly so, one may say, as our sonic world has never been so close to a constant, toxic din we are unaware of.