In the early days of cinema, all film was silent film. That’s because, technically, it was too challenging to match sound reels up with the accompanying moving pictures. These early “movies,” however—years before “talkies” would become all the rage—had something their talking counterparts didn’t. They had enforced silence. Sure, they played background music overtop of the moving images, but characters couldn’t speak. Live sound couldn’t be captured and played back in sync with the images.[1]

So filmmakers had to get creative. They had to take advantage, not of what they didn’t have, but what they did have. They had to embrace silence, this constraint, as a key feature of the film. They had to enhance what we as the audience would experience with our eyes, much like a deaf person whose sight becomes unusually keen.  

City Lights, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, is just such a brilliant case study. In the space of 87 minutes, it manages to range across hilarious slapstick humor, wild careening drama, and tender romantic scenes. It’s still considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. There are only one or two sound effects (since this 1931 film was actually made after “talkies” had begun to emerge). Yet we never feel that we’re missing anything. Most of the time we’re too busy enjoying what we see. Sure, every now and then, we’re told what a character is saying through an intertitle card. But most of the time, we don’t even need it.

There are sight gags a-plenty. Not just the slapstick humor we might associate with the Three Stooges, but far more advanced, mesmerizing sight gags, ones that need no sound. Chaplin’s character (the Tramp) in one scene pauses in front of an art store to admire a marble statuette of a woman. He backs up for a better view, then comes in closer. What he can’t see in the process—though we can—is that a sidewalk elevator lowers suddenly each time he steps off it and forward. At any moment he is in danger of falling into the cavern. But, of course, as if on cue, the elevator returns in time to meet his feet as he steps backward. Even more famous is the boxing scene, where The Tramp manages to knock out a heavyweight through sheer, stumbling incompetence. Though the bell that marks the end of the round is one of the few sounds synced with the film, there’s no sound necessary to understand, belly laugh, or empathize with the scene.[2]

Embracing constraints

In fact, Chaplin’s decision to make the film silent during an era of “talkies” was an act of creativity that meant choosing to work with one sense tied behind his back. As those who do creative work know, constraints can become the artist’s friend. If you’re starting with a blank page and anything is possible, the options become overwhelming. It’s called writer’s block or creative block. Limit yourself, though, by putting something on the page, and the constraint becomes a friend to actual artistic creation. What resulted from Chaplin’s voluntary constraints, his embrace of silence, was a creative triumph.

In silent film, so much becomes possible to the creators when they embrace the creative limitation of portraying a world in which there is no actual sound. It forces filmmakers to be so creative that, when sound did start making its way into film in the late 1920s, many critics howled. The end was near artistically, as they saw it. The novelist Aldous Huxley actually published an article called “Silence is Golden” in protest.[3] 

This is the second use of silence: canvas. Silence, whether it’s voluntary or just an acceptance of what’s there, can become a kind of creative space. If you’re unused to the idea of a painter’s canvas, think of it as white space where creative, imaginative work can get done. A space where something can happen, something new.

This use of silence as canvas is a recognition that, just like Chaplin and his silent film era, we’re not in complete control of our lives, or even our own work and creativity. We will always have constraints. If we fight against that reality, we’ll only suffer and make our work harder. But if we embrace our constraints, and come to terms with our limits, we can participate in a space where better work can happen, and better ideas can visit us.

The place where breakthroughs come from

Out of curiosity, where have you had your creative breakthroughs (when you’re trying to solve a problem or figure something out)? Is it while you’re sitting at your desk at work? Or is it somewhere else? 

If you’re like most people, your breakthroughs come when you’re letting your mind relax. They don’t arrive when you’re staring that problem in the face. They’re some time after that, when you’re taking a shower, on a jog, driving, falling asleep, even entering your first dream of the night. You’re being silent, your brain is being silent, and that’s sometimes when it can do its best work.

Is this just an accident, or is any of this genuine? Oh, it’s absolutely genuine. Eliezer Sternberg, a neurologist and author of NeuroLogic, explains it this way:

The unconscious system in the brain pieces together fragments of our perceptions, anticipating patterns and filling in gaps when necessary . . . to devise a single, meaningful interpretation.[4]

Your brain is always working, but often it can do only so much when you’re squinting it at things. Let it relax, though, give it silence, then it can do some of its best thinking. It’s almost like the file clerks in your brain go on break for coffee and doughnuts and end up comparing enough notes that they can put the puzzle together for you. You’ve shut down the art studio for the day, and someone shows up at your door with the completed painting.

Many artists have described this experience, of noticing the importance of blank space in their work rhythms. John Steinbeck, for instance, told the Paris Review:

Mark Twain used to write in bed—so did our greatest poet. But I wonder how often they wrote in bed . . . I should think that a comfortable body would let the mind go freely to its gathering.  . . . I have dawdled away a good part of my free time now carving vaguely on a scrap of mahogany, but I guess I have been thinking too. Who knows. I sit here in a kind of stupor and call it thought.[5]

If beautiful breakthroughs can happen when we’re not trying to make them happen, that should tell us something. It should tell us that, like silence, breakthroughs too are gifts. They come not just when we’re earning them, but when we’re doing literally nothing in their direction. It’s enough to make you consider scheduling silence into your work-life.

Practicing silence as canvas

Which is exactly what some have done, with great success. Allow me to share a few examples. 

Navy is a marketing agency, and marketing is an especially pernicious kind of work that can burn people out faster than you can say Office Space. Well, someone at Navy picked up on the use of silence as canvas back in 2011. They decided to run an experiment, one which lasted for four years. Know what they do now as a result of what they learned? They incorporate silence into their workday. Every morning before lunch, the team agrees to be completely silent. Not just no talking, but no emails, no Slack, no meetings. No noise and no distraction. They even put their phones away in drawers so they can really focus. They’re not just sitting in a Zen pose with their eyes closed. They’re still working. Pen to paper, as it were. Working in silence. Their CEO explains, “Quiet time is a contract: a few hours a week where we agree to work, even if we don’t feel like it.” And this isn’t just a weird ritual they go through: the results are impressive. The company estimates that their team is 23% more productive with the addition of “quiet time.”. As a result, they’re also less stressed, and they usually take Friday afternoons off because they’ve gotten so much done during the week.[6]

“Silence is a great canvas for your thoughts,” says Derek Sivers, a musician who started the first online music store, CDBaby. “It’s interesting how many highlights for me [from my career] were just sitting in a room, in that wonderful creative flow. Free from the chatter of the world.”[7] Sounds like someone who’s worked out their muscle of using silence, not someone afraid of an anechoic chamber.

Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown, even coined a term for the magnificent work that’s possible in undistracted silence. It’s also the title of his book: Deep Work.[8]

I’ve had friends who’ve taken life planning days for the very reason that silence can be canvas. Others have gone on silent retreats at Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, or observed a week of silence while part of the Taizé community in France.[9] No phones, no laptops, and no talking. It can be a bit unnerving for the first hour if you’ve never done it before (like Anechoic Chamber Lite™), but after that, if you welcome it, the shy thoughts come out one at a time, and start to play.

John Cage has already shown us what it can look like to truly listen inside a concert hall. But if you’ve begun to value listening, and you’re ready to learn canvas, you can turn any space into a somewhere music can flourish too. As conductor Leopold Stokowski once said (perhaps a bit tongue in cheek), “A painter paints his pictures on a canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.”[10]

If you’ve not yet experienced it, I’d like to introduce you to a poem by William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet from the early 20th century. It’s called “The Long-Legged Fly,” and it assembles some unlikely figures: Caesar, Helen of Troy, Michelangelo, and the long-legged fly of the title. This is Yeats’s name, by the way, for that insect you may have seen on rivers before, the one that skirts across the water as if it’s part Jesus. For Yeats, all four of these figures have something in common: they use silence as a canvas.  

Caesar is in his tents, looking over his maps, “his eyes fixed upon nothing.”

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.

Helen of Troy practices a little dance, perhaps one meant to woo suitors and shape international politics.

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

Her mind moves upon silence.

Michelangelo is at work, but quietly, painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel “with no more sound than the mice make.”

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon silence.[11]

It doesn’t take a world-renowned conductor, or a legendary name like Caesar, Helen, or Michelangelo to turn silence into canvas. You can do it yourself. All you need is a question, a project, or an idea. Just add silence.

Using silence as canvas enables you to see the creative space that is always there, waiting, no matter where you are. It helps you to understand that your mind too can move on silence and that, when it does, it’s a gift to you, far more valuable than your tendency to micromanage or wish your constraints away. Canvas teaches you that you can dip your brush into the silence, and make something out of it. Building on listening, note by note, it continues to create the potential for rhythm in your life, the potential for music instead of just noise.

[1] For an overview of the silent film era and its inherent constraints, see https://www.filmsite.org/silentfilms.html.

[2] These scenes from Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights (1933) can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naPUVYC4SbI and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCu8qj31UJk.

[3] Aldous Huxley’s article “Silence is Golden” was published in the July 1929 edition of Vanity Fair, which is viewable here: https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1929/7/silence-is-golden.

[4] Eliezer Sternberg, author of NeuroLogic, is quoted in an article on the unconscious here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076606-neurologic-the-enthralling-story-of-the-unconscious-mind/.

[5] John Steinbeck’s interview in the Paris Review (fall 1969) can be read here: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3810/john-steinbeck-the-art-of-fiction-no-45-john-steinbeck.

[6] Navy’s CEO wrote his own overview of their company’s “quiet time” here: https://medium.com/@oliebol/quiet-time-969ccc3416f8, but the experiment is also discussed in a 2017 Fast Company article here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3068168/quiet-doesnt-cut-it-why-your-brain-might-work-better-in-silence.

[7] Derek Sivers’s comments can be found here: https://sivers.org/dc.

[8] Newport, Cal. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York: Grand Central, 2016.

[9] For more on Mepkin Abbey, see https://mepkinabbey.org/. For more on Taizé, see https://www.taize.fr/en.

[10] Stokowski’s quote on music and silence can be found here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leopold_Stokowski.

[11] William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Long-Legged Fly,” originally published in 1939, can be read here: https://www.poetryireland.ie/publications/poetry-ireland-review/online-archive/view/long-legged-fly.

Selah

Here’s a second experiment to try. This will take a little longer than the last one, but it also includes some literal exercise! 

1. Identify a question that’s been on your mind recently. Not a cosmic question; just an answerable question that has you stuck.

2. Now put on your walking / jogging / cycling clothes.

3. Ask yourself the question. Out loud, if you care to.

4. Take some time to enjoy the outdoors. Don’t focus on your question. Instead, pay attention to the outdoors, what you see, what you hear, the weather, the terrain.

5. Along the way, your brain may announce that it has an idea. If so, go ahead and listen to it, hear what it has to suggest. If this doesn’t happen, don’t try to make it happen. Stay in the moment.

6. When you return, revisit the question. See if anything new has occurred to you.

Your Turn

You don’t need to be an artist or a creative professional to practice the use of silence as canvas. We all have decisions to make, things to build, growth to pursue. In those parts of our lives, we can all hit walls or creative block. So consider the following options to start putting this use of silence into practice:

●      Start journaling. If you already journal, consider how you might make the tough questions in your life something that you write about.

●      Ask yourself a question you’re stuck on before you go to sleep at night. Some people call this “asking your dreams.”[1]

●      Take a life planning day or an annual review day. There are many ways to do these, including inventing your own! But if you’d like to start from a template, consider a life planning template or an annual review template.[2]

●      Take a silent retreat, for a day or two. Journal every now and then, whether that’s about your life, your dreams, or what you’re thinking or feeling during the silence.

●      If a day or two is too dramatic for you right now, take a silent evening or a silent morning. Even a silent hour. Make sure to turn off your devices and, if it fits your life, set an email auto-responder letting people know that you’re unavailable.

●      Consider building silence into your workday. If you need to, signal this to your coworkers or get permission from your boss. Take steps to ensure you will actually experience silence when you need it..

Identify where your best ideas have visited you. The next time you get stuck, revisit that place—and remember to focus only on that activity, not where you’re stuck.

[1] An introduction to “asking your dreams” can be found here: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/need-to-solve-a-problem-dreaming-may-help.html.

[2] A life planning template by Michael Hyatt can be found here: https://michaelhyatt.com/creating-a-life-plan/, and an annual review template by Jason Shen can be found here: https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-run-your-own-annual-review-c5573637767c.