Is there no way out of the mind? -- Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath - a bit of a misquote:
"Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time."
(London and Westminster Review, 1838)
No misquote. ""Speech is of Time; Silence is of Eternity."
Sartor Resartus,
Everyman ed., p. 164.
Silence is, sounds are. - J. Cage
Since we're tossing
Is there no way out of the mind? -- Sylvia Plath
A bit of a misquote:
"Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time."
(London and Westminster Review, 1838)
No misquote. ""Speech is of Time; Silence is of Eternity." _Sartor Resartus_,
Everyman ed., p. 164.
Silence is, sounds are. - J. Cage
Since we're tossing
Cagean sentiments,
hope (this isn't)
stretching it too far!
If theological language, .....
..... you might sense a unity
here.
Kierkegaard:
"It is man's superiority over the beast to be able to speak; but in relation
to God it can easily become the ruin of man who is able to speak that he is
too willing to speak...There was something that lay so close to his heart, a
matter of such consequence to him, it was so important that he should make
God understand him, he was afraid that in his prayer he might forget
something...and and if he had forgotten it, he was afraid God might not of
himself remember it - therefore he would collect himself to pray right
earnestly..In proportion as he became more and more earnest in prayer, he
had less and less to say, and in the end he became quite silent. He became
silent - indeed, what is if possible still more expressly the opposite of
speaking, he became a hearer. He had supposed that to pray is to speak; he
learned that to pray is not merely to be silent but to hear. And so it is:
to pray is not to hear oneslef speak, but it is to be silent, and to remain
silently waiting until one hears God speak."
(from _Discourses on Christianity_, Lowrie trans.)
And who's to say the sounds of Sixth Ave. are any less the "voice of God"
(to speak in Kierkegaard's phraseology) than anything else? I think
Kierkegaard would say Cage either had a very long and utterly enjoyable
wait, or he didn't _wait_ at all...
Finally, one more from Simone Weil:
"Attentiveness without aim is the supreme form of prayer."