On the Line

"Silence is not visible, and yet its existence is clearly apparent. It extends to the farthest distances, yet is so close to us that we can feel it as concretely as we feel our own bodies. It is intangible, yet we can feel it as directly as we feel materials and fabrics."

That is the late Swiss philosopher Max Picard (1888-1965), as quoted by LM Sacasas in a recent issue of The Convivial Society. Writes Sacasas: “Those were the lines that first helped me perceive silence as an autonomous reality, and they did so simply by leading me to think again about what silence feels like. When in the presence of silence, I do not feel an emptiness, rather I feel something. Something looming, something active, something that is at work on me.” (The Picard quote is from his book The World of Silence, originally published in 1948.)

. . .

"Even the Pokémon noises are gently mellowed out in contrast to the coarser, more caterwauling sounds of the games; here the creatures purr, cry, coo and sigh like docile house pets."

That is Maya Philips writing in the New York Times about a new Netflix series titled Pokémon Concierge.

. . .

"He never allows you to rest, because he never settles into a groove or plays a familiar lick. His sound is a permanent antidote to complacency."

That is from a review in the New York Review of Books by Adam Shatz of Easily Slip into Another World: A Life in Music, the new autobiography from musician Henry Threadgill, who wrote it with Brent Hayes Edwards. (Thanks, Evan Cooper!)