Je ne vous oblige pas à tout lire, just thanks to Mr Clark & Léa for the idea !
The kind of silence you might have experienced when you are on your own in the countryside, lying on your back in a field and looking up at the stars. Just a beautiful beautiful silence. Or the kind of silence you get when everyone has sung happy birthday and the person whose birthday it is poised with their eyes closed just before they blow out the candles. Or when a baby has been crying all night, crying for hours and hours, driving its mum and dad completely round the bend and then, unexpectedly, eventually it does go to sleep and then there's this beautiful silence. Or when you're in an elevator with a friend and you're talking about sex and then the elevator stops and a stranger gets in and the two of you stop your conversation and you ride up 20 floors with this stranger stood between you in this beautiful silence. Or the kind of silence where people try to think about their dead friends or relatives – they go to the cemetery and stand around the grave and there's this beautiful silence. Or when you are trying to change the channel on TV and you accidentally press the mute button. Or when there's a news conference on TV and a journalist who doesn't speak English very well tries to ask a question but he can't get the words right and people don't really understand what he's asking and after he's finished there's a beautiful silence. Or the kind of silence at a press conference when the Leader of a great nation isn't prepared for what's coming and he gets asked a complicated question and he doesn't have a answer ready from his advisors so you see him thinking and he doesn't answer at all. Or the kind of silence when you're cleaning in a house and without expecting it, down the back of the sofa or something, you come across a tiny baby shoes. Or what happens when a teacher asks a question to a kid in a school – not the brightest kid in the class – but one who tries hard and the teacher asks the question and then there's a beautiful silence. Or when there are two kids playing their house alone, playing in their parent's bedroom and they find a loaded gun and then there are two shots – and silence. Or when there's a family on a big outing to the countryside and the dad is driving and everyone is singing in the car and fooling around and the dad makes a mistake and swerves and rolls the car off the road, and it flips and it rolls down the embankment and turns over a few times before it hits the bottom and crashes into a tree and the father is kind of shaken and he says “ Is everyone OK ? ” and there's a beautiful silence. Or you're on the bus and there's an explosion right near you that makes your eardrums disintegrate – and you look around and there are people screaming and you can't hear anything at all. Or the kind of silence you get when a family gather in a hospital to turn off a life-support machine – everyone is gathered to say their goodbyes to the mother who's been in this coma for months and the kids are crying and the father is trying to be strong and the doctor turns to the father and asks him “ Yes ? ” and the father looks to his new mistress and she nods and the father says “ yes ”. SO the doctor turns off the machine. Or the kind of silence you hear between tracks on a CD. Or the kind of silence you get sometimes in a very long phone call, where each of you talked an talked, and talked and suddenly there is nothing left to say.
