Silence in G Minor

The Webster stories, "Webster's Diction" , are best read in order.

This story is lecture #2 in Professor Webster's classroom, you may have an interest in lesson #1, "The Color of God" .

Silence in G Minor

“Silence!”

‘Boy, he must be in a bad mood,’ thought Carlisle. The noise in the classroom, after-all, was not any more or less than it usually is at the start of Webster’s lectures, a mix of cordial nods, a rustling of books and chairs, intermittent heavy breathing from those who ran across campus, and a hushed comparison of cryptic notes from the prior week.

“Silence!” Professor Webster bellows into hushed questioning stares, revealing it is not the absence of sound he seeks, but possibly to title his lecture.

“Damn,” mouths Carlisle, ‘he always catches us off-guard, even when we follow his every move’ Carlisle took care to finish the condemnation in his head. Most other students use the short pause between outbursts to scribble ‘Silence,’ underlining it once, sometimes twice, in direct relation to their level of confidence that it is, indeed, the topic of the day. Some students don’t underline it at all, knowing too well that old Webster can signal a fastball, down and outside, and then hit you between the eyes with a knuckleball.

“Can there be silence, without noise?” The hum’s and hah’s already adding credibility to his proposition. “Sshh,” he whispers, with a stubby finger held two inches from his lips, his leaning body supported by his left hand, as if he were inebriated and unable to touch the tip of his nose with his finger. “What do you hear when all sound abates?”

“We hear nothing. Silence, right?” Gupta said hesitantly, but with his hand in the air, knowing that tight lipped murmurs were ineffective in this classroom, for the Professor had an uncanny ability to identify unclaimed breath, let alone, an utterance.

“Mr. Gupta,” Webster said softly as he straightened his back, “you underlined ‘Silence’ twice, did you not?”

There was no use denying it, ‘how does he do it,’ Gupta shared the thought with those who quietly flipped-over their well sharpened pencils, smearing 'Silence' into nothing once again.

“Mr. Cabra,” Webster’s gaze was now directed to the back of the room, “a word of advice to you and your overzealous friends, never underline anything twice, it’s too much of a commitment. It will surely cage your mind.” To which Mr. Gupta nearly imprisoned himself, as he attempted to underline ‘mind,’ and settled instead to retracing the word, giving no hint of inclination to old Webster.

Webster remembered well enough the last time he underscored anything, ‘Muriel B. Webster,’ which he offered hesitantly into the ravenous gape, which had pushed all other words apart, leaving a sterile emptiness, waiting to swallow , ‘Muriel B. Webster’ into its despicable belly, between ‘Know all men by these presents, that’ and ‘hereinafter the deceased.’ Two inches of space, all the room in the world to imprison two lives. The silence was unbearable that day. White, cold, deafening. He thought it would claim his eardrums, though its presence alone assured otherwise.

“Silence, Mr. Gupta, is every man’s infinity. And nothing, nothing is the absence of all things, even silence.” Webster said, in what some thought was a cheerless tone. “After your last word, there is silence, after your last thought, there is silence, after your last breath, there is silence. But, where there never was breath, there is nothing, where there never was sound, there is nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“Nothing comes, from nothing, everything else exists.”

“Silence is every man’s infinity,” he repeats, almost in a whisper, his gaze wandering out the window, as if following the choreographed exhales of a captured audience.

“Infinity extends in all ways, from all things, but not from nothing. So, I ask you, is there silence before life?” He looks to Ms. Lauren, but speaks to Carlisle, “Mr. Carlisle, before Dr. So-and-So slapped your skinny behind, there surely must have been sweet, sweet silence.” Everyone laughed, especially Gupta, who thought Carlisle had been incarnated more times than Vishnu, simply to prove a point.

“Intuition!”

There is an uncomfortable pause this time, “Ms. Cole, what is it I’m trying to say?” Webster, tripped by the weight of emptiness, called on the reliable Ms. Cole to reset his course.

“I think sir,” Ms. Cole was always formal in her address. Her polished demeanor reminded him of young Muriel Webster, actually, she was young Muriel O’Connor at the time, young Muriel B. O’Connor, lovely young Muriel Bernice O’Connor. “I think sir,” Cole repeats, louder this time trying to capture his gaze which was floating out the open window again, “you were describing silence as infinite, ever-present. You may have been guiding us towards Descartes, you asked us to read the First Meditation last night.”

“Yes, Descartes” he launches to attention, “Descartes guides us towards knowledge, down two paths, Intuition and Deduction. Descartes tells us that intuition is the illumination of innate, ever-present knowledge, undoubted and un-deducted knowledge that springs to a willing and attentive mind.”

“Intuition, is broken silence,” Webster revs his engine once more, they all expected he would.

“Like when I knew how to cry when the doctor slapped my ass, right. I mean my behind – sorry,” Carlisle knew he jumped in too soon, ‘damn, I may as well have underlined it three times,’ he thought.

“Mr. Carlisle, I do hear how you carry your mind in that general vicinity, but I am speaking of matters more existential than your rear extremities.” Professor Webster speaks while taking a two handed grip of his own existentialism, letting Carlisle know he was striking in good fun. “There are two things I must admit, as much I would prefer not to. One, is you are partially correct, although you speak of innate behavior, and I speak of innate knowledge, the other, I must say, is, most certainly, I need to diet.” The room bursts into laughter, turning heads in the courtyard toward the slightly vented window.

“Cogito, ergo sum!” Webster lets it roll off his tongue, as if he is striking it on a kettle drum.

“Cogito, ergo sum.” Most heads turn to Gupta, as if Webster is speaking Panjabi, or some other obscure Indian dialect, to which Gupta raises his shoulders indicating an unwillingness to accept responsibility for the professor’s insanity.

“Cogito, ergo sum. Rest easy Mr. Gupta, it’s Latin - I think, therefore I am.”

“Or is it, sum, ergo cogito?” Which it most certainly cannot be, as it rolls much less readily from Webster’s lips, making him look somewhat spastic.

“Ms. Lauren, you’ve been awfully quiet today. Which is it Ms. Lauren?”

Lauren mimics Gupta’s gesture, but has the presence of mind to add, “I don’t know, Professor. I’m not sure.”

“Good – now there’s a place to start. Thank you Ms. Lauren, thank you indeed.”

“Doubt!” This time he holds his finger, assuredly, above his head, in apparent contradiction to his pronouncement. “Doubt, Ms. Lauren, a true pupil of Descartes, though you may not know it, yet.”

“Descartes taught us to presuppose an evil genius, with the power to fool us into believing the sky is blue and the grass is green. Ergo, we must not trust our senses in deriving our truths, and even you Mr. Carlisle, can be fooled into believing you will pass my class.” Everyone but Carlisle smiles nervously. “However, this evil genius, though he can make you think yourself a teapot, or princess Margaret’s horse, he cannot make you think you are naught. Cogito, ergo sum – music to my ears.”

“Intuition is the whisper of gods. Intuition is broken silence. It can’t be right or wrong – it just is.” Gupta returns to his prior notes, to erase his earlier commitment to ‘mind.’ “Be careful what you erase, Mr. Gupta, for it changes everything,” Webster knew Gupta was re-thinking earlier notes.

“Silence is the most cruel necessity of life.” Webster allows it to fall unhurriedly from his lips, as if he drooled it on a dentist’s chair.

“What is cold, without heat? What is tall, without short, What is good without evil, what is freedom, without chains? Beethoven’s Fifth would be most distracting, if not for well apportioned rests.” Webster looks tired once again.

“Silence, ergo sum!”

“Ergo sum - broken silence.” He would have chuckled with Muriel over tea tonight, as he described their faces, he would have chuckled over tea with Muriel tonight. As his class files out quietly, he is distracted by the voices in the courtyard. 'Muriel has such a sweet laugh,' he says to himself, not realizing he had just used the present tense.



Gupta’s Notes:

Gupta and Cole will sit together in the courtyard for a while, for there will surely be a quiz, and Gupta can hardly understand his puzzling notes, with the intermittent erasing and sideways margins. Cole can't help but free her weightless giggle, letting it float through the courtyard, seeping through unexpecting windows.

Before Cole starts with her usual methodical approach, she explains how the Professor lost his wife, nearly six years ago. She was a mathematician at the college, and she played the piano. She had died rather suddenly, but Cole did not know of what.

They both agreed that this was very sad, and quite likely the reason Webster was a little off-center today. They then turned their attention to Gupta’s notes. Their lack of direction, as if running off the page by the nearest path, to escape the ‘evil genius’ he unveiled to the right of center, gave her further reason for an outburst of laughter, which, restrained as it was, nonetheless undulated like lightly pressed notes on a well tuned piano.

Gupta turns first to the word he erased, still making itself known as, ‘Silence,’ even though he had traced ‘Intuition,’ twice, in its place. Cole tells Gupta that Descartes believes there is certain knowledge that is innate, like silence, it is always there, but not taken to notice until you break it. Intuition comes to you like a flash of briliance, like 'the whisper of gods' – “Intuition,” she said, “like striking a G Minor chord during meditation in your Temple.”

“Why does he tell me to be careful what I erase, I will cage it? I don’t get it?”

“I think he means that a space, a pause, or something erased, can change the whole meaning of what you have taken care to arrange. Consider Beethoven’s Fifth, like he said, the rests are as important as the notes, one misplaced rest would change the symphony altogether.”

“But what does he mean, ‘can there be silence without noise’?” Gupta refers to his margin while turning his page sideways.

“I think he is telling us that life is noise, like the comment he made about the doctor slapping Carlile’s behind.”

“Oh, yes, you mean Vishnu,” Gupta interrupted.

“Uh?”

“Carlisle, he’s like Vishnu, the Indian God of many incarnations, never mind, do go on.”

“Like I said, noise is like life, it comes and goes, in an infinite sea of silence.” Gupta loves when she uses water metaphors, it makes him feel like he is floating away on a breathy cushion of words, in the sleepy backwaters of Kerala bay.

Gupta recovers,“that’s right, Webster said silence is infinite,” he is glad to still make out the word he had so hastily erased.

Cole continues, like a wave curling under its own brilliance, “I think he’s telling us about god again, you know? He said silence is infinity and infinity stretches from all things, but infinity has no beginning, or end, or it would not be infinity, I think he’s saying infinity is something, you know what I mean?” Gupta surely does not, but her soft lips weigh on him like a bag of Halloween candy, ‘I love, ergo sum,’ he thinks, as he slips purposefully unnoticed, like a well timed pause, into her symphony of oscillating tides.


I will be writing a series of stories involving Professor Webster and his Philosophy Lectures. If you would care to read other stories on Webster, as they come available, please see Folder, "Webster's Diction" .The Next Story is "Three Hats, a Blind Man and a Dime" .