“Silence is the ocean of the unsaid, the unspeakable, the repressed, the erased, the unheard. It surrounds the scattered islands made up of those allowed to speak and of what can be said and who listens.”
I recently delivered a text speaking against the power of final judgement. It was meant to be recited to an audience of jury members and musicians as part of a national music competition. Musically and courageously, my text voiced a poetic critique of its setting. It raised questions, demanded response.
The answer came in the shape of denial: after a try-out the jury decided against the recital, unless revisions be made. Theirs was an answer of fear for interrupted inviolability, for the impairment of having the final word. An imperative of silence guised as a call for mildness. My small text was censured, silenced, and I’m glad—it proves its power. Spoken or unspoken.
Dear jury, I won’t smother my words, nor will I stop scattering question marks in my wake. My words may drown half-heard, yet that means they’ve reached below-surface. And there they remain, waiting to be hooked, or exposed in the flow of a new stream.
Mirthe van Popering 