The Sound of Silence: Mothers of Invention

It’s a truly remarkable place: the bottom floor of an old high school crammed with charcoals, markers, and paints; buttons, wallpaper scraps, and wire; a potting wheel, a darkroom, and sewing machines. Add in kids from elementary through high school and the place can get pretty raucous. “I’ve learned to like the noise a lot,” she says. “In some ways, noise equals work.”

Culturally, we’re wired to prefer noise. (The fact that many of us walk around literally wired proves this.) Silence can be uncomfortable. Too much of it, and we grab for the remote control or the phone. For an artist, silence is also a signal that it’s time to get to business. When faced with a silent house, I can do a load of laundry and putter in the kitchen only so long before the quiet nearly demands that I get to work. (Notice that laundry is a form of procrastination; writing is The Work.)

Though the stillness of a single evening can be a gift—the wanton desire described by Brown—too much of it can be overwhelming. My kids are still quite young, but already I fear the silence of their departure, just as I once feared their noise.

Last summer, with her daughter away at an internship, Tilly drove her high school-aged son to Chicago for a flight to Spain. “I was feeling okay about it until he passed through the security gates at O’Hare and turned out of sight,” she remembers. “I suddenly realized that I was going to walk back to the car, and drive home, and be by myself for two weeks. It was really scary.”

No matter our desire for a moment alone, as mothers, we are called on so frequently, in urgency and joy, that abrupt silence is jarring. The void of children’s voices leads us to wonder what we’re good for. And yet something does summon us. Our creative work offers an ongoing conversation. Listen, you can hear it calling.