Silence Means BE QUIET
Mike reflects on a memory from his senior year of high school in Steubenville, in which his friend Heather firmly stood up to a gathering of rowdy hooligans and demanded quiet during a moment of silence.
Silence is an unnatural state that induces discomfort. But it also reveals the extent to which we are accustomed to a noisy world.
Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to Crimson House for one of those rare days where I actually have some spare time and thoughts to share in these wandering productions of ours. I was watching my earlier broadcast and realized I left some critical gaps—you know how I can get a little ADD and prone to spitballing, especially when I'm just doing scriptless banter without an assistant to jot things down. My mom somehow still finds out everything I do through the Facebook grapevine, so I have to be careful not to say anything she wouldn’t want to hear.
I wanted to provide some context for a name I mentioned earlier - Heather, a classmate of mine from the Steubenville High School Class of 2004. Back in senior year, during a moment of silence for a football game or some event, a group of people started talking loudly, breaching the silence. No more than 3 seconds later, a voice burst from the hushed crowd - specifically from Heather’s irritated glare towards the excess chatter:
“Silence” means BE QUIET
It would be lazy and reductionist to call the moment an outburst. Rather it was an intentional, firm statement in which Heather stood up for silence itself with the powerful declaration that “Silence means be quiet.”
It makes me think about how we live in such a noisy world and how even I feel an unnatural pressure to fill the void when I’m on camera. Silence is a very underappreciated thing, yet we often treat it as an awkward state to be escaped. I’m actually going to try to honor her words with a few minutes of unadulterated silence right now, just to hear the birds singing and the flags waving outside.
Looking at my Quebec flag, I’m reminded of my time living in Montreal as an immigrant and my deep admiration for the Quebec spirit of maintaining a unique culture and identity in North America. It’s a stark contrast to the homogeneity of "strip motopia" and car-dependent sprawl we see in so many other places. I actually had a career dream of working for Hydro Quebec—it’s the Google or Facebook of the energy world—but as an English speaker, it was nearly impossible to fully immerse myself and learn the language well enough to fit in.
Being back here in Alexandria, Louisiana, I’ve come to appreciate freedom as more than just a cliché bumper sticker; it’s something people like those in Ukraine are fighting for right now. Even though I live by a busy traffic circle, I find the constant hum of the road more settling than the total silence of the country where every little noise jumps out at you.
I’m sitting here now in a "happy but messy" state, enjoying some homemade spicy stuffed peppers with mangoes—a real hit compared to some of my past cooking misses. It’s the day after a great date, and I’m just feeling wonderful, even if I look like a hot mess.
As we head into this Easter weekend —or "Jesus/rabbit day" as I might call it — don't take things too seriously. Go hide some eggs, see your family, and remember that silence is its own sort of music, unscripted and just happening all around you.
Understanding the value of quiet is much like appreciating the rests in a musical score; without those intentional gaps of nothingness, the individual notes would lose their meaning and blur into a single, exhausting noise.
