A short transcript of a YouTube conversation (host Chris Collins with author/actor Tembi Locke) about the role of silence and stillness in grieving and healing. Locke reflects on needing silence after busy periods of travel and promotion (mentions Sicily and leaving Los Angeles for a sparsely populated mountain town) and argues that avoiding silence only delays grief, which will eventually find a person.
This time on books that changed my life.
January arrives after a few months without writing, months in which I've lived, turned outward in the uproar of the world. Traveling, promoting books, giving lectures, surrounded by people, talking. Too much noise and more noise. Most of all, I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence. Without silence, I am done for. You understand why this book will change your life. Because sitting in that house in Sicily.
In the silence of a sparsely populated mountain town, having left the noisy world of la, and here is someone saying what I was kind of feeling like if I don't. If I can't slow the world down, I don't know that I'll survive. And that's kind of like a grieving person's set point and starting point.
So I only have my human experience, but to me, that only comes after the decision has been made to grieve. Because a lot of times people will run from the silence, and they never want to face it. So isn't the silence, in a sense, the step to healing?
I absolutely feel it is. And you're right.
There is another way to do it, which is to run and keep busy and noise and chaos and, like, distractions.
I'm gonna tell you, it's gonna find you grief.
Yeah, but you can up the drama.
You can up the speed. You can up the speed. You can up the speed, but it is still gonna come for you. So eventually it will come for you.
I agree. But a lot of people have a hard time with silence.
I know, I know, I know.
