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A newspaper writer described a couple “…in the desert darkness west of Tucson, smiling beatifically at what resembles a drive-in movie screen covered with mirrors. Their faces are bathed in a blue-tinged light. After absorbing concentrated moonbeams for two minutes in silence, they yield their place to other people waiting in line. … Over the past year, an increasing number of people have converged on this lonely patch of private land to submit themselves to intense levels of moonlight. The experience is courtesy of Interstellar Light Applications, a Tucson company that has poured $2 million dollars (U. S.)  into the belief that there is therapeutic value to lunar rays magnified by mirrors. On some nights, as many as 120 people show up.” Dennis Wagner in The Arizona Republic and featured in the Wednesday May 16th, 2007 issue of The Globe and Mail’s Social Studies column. 

I wonder how many people watched the total lunar eclipse in this country last night in total silence? How many, I wonder, were content just to stand there taking in a spectacle we won’t see again until 2010? As I said in last night’s radio program, the ancients were fearful of changes in the sky overhead. They read all kinds of omens in these celestial events. Today, we no longer fear the changing heavens. Instead of relishing the moment, absorbed in our own silent thoughts, we hold eclipse parties. There was certainly a festive atmosphere onboard a military vessel as the light slowly returned to the lunar surface.

Last night’s silence in the north Pacific was shattered when a U. S. Navy vessel fired a missile at a defective, aging spy satellite that was going to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. The powers-that-be decided to take no chances of the possibility of it crashing in a populated area. So, they decided to break it up before re-entry took place. In the vacuum of space, it made as much noise as the shadow that crept across the moon’s landscape. Only in sci-fi movies and TV series, like Star Trek, is there a soundtrack to weapons’ fire and explosions. Space is inherently silent. 

I remember a show that ran at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto many years ago that featured lasers and music. I was relatively new to the radio business at the time and decided to see the show one night after work. The audience was treated to a thrilling spectacle of light and music. I remember the starfield projected overhead giving the impression we were out among the stars. After the show, I had the opportunity to speak with the show’s technician who choreographed the entire experience. It served to pique my interest even more in our own little corner of the Universe.

Back here on earth, there are silences that command out attention..

The French writer, Collette, said: “All of us wince when a rose–falling apart in a tepid room–lets go one of its shell-like petals, and sends it adrift into its own reflection on a smooth, marble surface. The sound of its fall–very soft, distinct–is like a syllable of silence, and enough to move a poet.”

A listener wrote to tell me that she was in Calgary during the September 11th crisis. She could not get back home for a few days. During that time, she went into a card store and found these words, words that helped to put some aspects of her life into perspective. This is a portion of what she sent, penned by an unknown author. “Touch me in places no one has ever reached before / In silent places where words only interfere, / In sad places where only whispering makes sense.”

There are also times when we would wish a break in the silence…

W. R. Goldsmith was quoted in the January 30th, 2006 issue of The Globe and Mail’s Social Studies Column. “Nothing so stirs a man’s conscience or excites his curiosity as a woman’s dead silence.”

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Don Jackson

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