22:17 - Saturday, Mar. 18, 2006
minor fall, major lift
I am slowly (and deliberately) becoming someone who relishes silence in conversation. There are very few people like this anywhere, it seems. At big parties, the music is turned up loud enough to mask any silences that may happen. Often, it ends up masking one long silence that lasts until everyone is sufficiently wasted to lose all their inhibitions. At smaller parties, where it might seem inappropriate to blast the stereo, people fill in these small (and natural and enjoyable, in my opinion) silences with phrases like 'good times' and 'nice', and also awkward laughs and position shifting. I HATE THIS. Why is it so terrible to have silence?
Here are two of my roommates, one with her ear pressed into his back, saying 'I can hear your vocal chords vibrating' and then falling silent, listening to his humming along to the Decemberists. This needs no acknowledgment on his part, and it gets none. He keeps humming.
Here is my sometimes lover, who I am calling my sometimes lover now, even though he is my constant lover, playing his guitar. (It's too much pressure on my hopes to refer to him as anything he may not always be.) He is figuring out chord progressions by listening to a song in five second bursts, but he doesn't have my ear, and it is painfully slow. Periodically I will burst into his room shouting, "Do you hear what he's singing? He's singing it! And it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift... the minor fall is the 6, the A minor! The major lift is the 4, the F major! He's singing it for you!" forgetting that not everyone took Music Theory 1,
and he stops, and looks up at me, and says, "Please be quiet and let me figure it out myself."
Yeah, be quiet. I have trouble with it myself when it comes to the minor fall and the major lift, but it's not any less puzzling and perfect just because it's me having trouble with it.
It disturbs people when I am not disturbed by silence. I am longwinded textually, but in life, I am mostly just observant, with the whirlwind happening entirely internally... which is fine with me.

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