With Christine Sun Kim’s visit to our class, her silly but thoughtful activity, and our visit to the “What Can a Body Do?” exhibit at Haverford, the idea of silence and sound in respect to members of the Deaf community, ASL and those that can hear have continuously popped into my head. I have always found myself intrigued by signing and how beautifully it flows and how much can be said in simple signs. Along with signing come the facial expressions that make up most of the grammar in ASL and the sounds made during conversation. But when it comes to those that hear, silence is often something we fear; a part of our life that we choose to push away but crave at other moments. Ideas of sound and silence are both topics that link themselves with her visit and our class as a whole.

Being able to experience Kim’s art first hand and welcoming her into our classroom, I couldn’t help but feel like connecting it all to our class’ conversations about silence or our approaches to silence. I feel like they are similar journeys. Not to say that our journey is anything compared to hers  but that we have also been struggling to figure out where we belong in an environment filled with silence and what that means for us as a whole class and individually. As Kim said to us and as it says in the “What Can A Body Do?”  gallery pamphlet, her art is her own way of taking “ownership” of sound. As we have been constantly discussing, silence is an element that we may have not directly considered or consciously considered.

I thought that this poem fit nicely with both feminism and the environment, since it’s a pretty accurate representation of Sandy, and written by Adrienne Rich.

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,


And knowing better than the instrument 


What winds are walking overhead, what zone 


Of grey unrest is moving across the land,


I leave the book upon a pillowed chair


And walk from window to closed window, watching 


Boughs strain against the sky

_________________

And think again, as often when the air


Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,


How with a single purpose time has traveled 


By secret currents of the undiscerned


Into this polar realm. Weather abroad


And weather in the heart alike come on 


Regardless of prediction.

_______________

Between foreseeing and averting change


Lies all the mastery of elements 


Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. 


Time in the hand is not control of time,


Nor shattered fragments of an instrument


A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,


We can only close the shutters.

________________

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black 


And set a match to candles sheathed in glass


Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine


Of weather through the unsealed aperture.

I would like to further explore how I understand silence as a first generation Cambodian-American within the Cambodian community as well as within my own family. In the previous web event paper I wrote about how stifling it was to live in a household dictated by my father. What I struggled to come to terms with was the unexpected guilt that I felt after I realized that my choice to speak out against him may have silenced him. But what I want to explore in this web event paper is how silence is exemplified when I am with my grandparents and any other Khmer speaking person who isn’t intent on purposefully silencing me.

Christine Sun Kim: Silence as Discipline and Mediated Viewings of Art

“Hold your tongue”.  “Use your inside voice”.  “Don’t talk back”.  These common phrases all refer to controlling your silence/voice as a way of demonstrating control and discipline.    From a young age, children are taught rules of silence and quietness at home and at school, to varying degrees given that culture of their environment.  Many of my classmates have talked about being silence in their homes growing up as a sign of respect.  But what does it mean when a deaf person is expected to control their voice or to be aware of the noises they make? Christine Sun Kim, who was born deaf was still expected to lives within the conventional norms of sound.  She states, as a child, “They would tell me: be quiet.  Don’t burp, drag your feet, make loud noises.  I learned to be respectful of their sound.” (Selby)  This experience led Kim to question what it meant to have control over sound and explore this through the avenue of art.

          In our class journey, we have recognized, outlined, and named several different types of silence. Our daily silent practices display this especially. We’ve been led through guided meditations, during which the conflicting dialogues in our minds cleared but the room was still full of Anne’s voice. We watched a silent pianist for 4 minutes, who aimed to prove that there is no silence, as the world consists of layers of sound, many of which we can only hear when we’re both quiet and listening. We had one class during which we were mindful, placing all of our attention in our feet, and we walked around without speaking or communicating in any form with others. Sarina led an exercise which was about communicating silently, with our bodies, in an action game. I led a blind contour drawing exercise. We’ve made collaboratively written short stories and engaged in soundless free-writes on our assumptions and what has been unspoken between us.

          Most of the exercise facilitators have taken the “silence” requirement to mean the absence of sound. This brings me back to the first question I wrote about in this class – which was inspired by the image of the empty library; I wondered if a library is silent, or a book. Although it has the capacity to be a noiseless space, it is full of symbols and dormant meaning -- meaning that must be read to be heard.

My thoughts are fractured and fracturing. My visit to the moon bench (where I will remain for the rest of the semester) wasn't memorable, to say the least. While I was sitting there I was aware that there was a storm brewing somewhere off the coast, and it seemed appropriate. The weather is cold and nasty, it has transformed my mood which was initially one of lightheartedness into one reflective of the storm, dark and gloomy. Sarah C's post stands out to me because she has found "a gateway to Mother Earth herself." I would love to visit the duck pond, maybe we could go as a class? I feel like I need to reconnect to the Earth and nature, even while I was sitting outside in the midst of it I did not feel connected to it. I felt very distracted, and I think my gameplan for next week will be to try and continue to find ways to connect with the Earth. Rather than change my spot on campus I would like to try and change my perspective or mindset when visiting my spot and see how this changes it.

Disclaimer: This is entirely tongue-in-cheek

Oops, accidentally posted twice.

Attached is my web event for Anne.