On Silence...

Hey, what are you in?
What makes you thizz?

Uppers, Snow, Yayo, Dexies, Meth, X, Smack... Silence?

Yeah, this last one, believe or not, it can be a trip.

We hold on to life till our very last minute, even through a self inflicted death, I believe that the deepest intention behind such choice must be driven by an intense desire to live, to really live and no longer fear and hurt. When we get inebriated, anesthetized by some drug, we get to experience a divine connection with the world, one that drives us into a non-frontier existence, a non-me, a non-you, just being in pleasure, plenitude, which then drives us, and that's the dangerous part of it, into a state of no fear, of no survival instinct. That is why so many of us need to be on something, to drink or smoke.

Jacques Cousteau in his first dives experienced what he later called the "l'ivresse des profondeurs" (Nitrogen narcosis), a relief of anxiety, a feeling of tranquility and mastery of the environment. High altitude climbers have also described states of strange peace and dreamy psychosis caused by the lack of oxygen in the brain.

Through silence, solitude, you can and will experience this kind of deep emotional connection with the world. As if in a state of being drunk, you lose your identity and just are, with no real sense of location or time, heavy or light, no distinction between inside and outside. And it's only when one gets back to his personality, ego, that these states cease and things come back to normal. But a certain feeling of loss is felt...

We all search, some more intensively than others, for what the french call as "jouissance", from jouir which means to play with pleasure, enjoyment. It's not the same as entertainment, to be entertained while your attention is absorbed by something else, but exactly the opposite, to feel intensely our own existence, the grace of existing, to feel and almost grasp the grandiosity of the divine.

Whether you believe in God or not, we have all experienced something in life that goes beyond explanation, and it's impossible not to think that there's something greater than us when we simply watch a hawk hovering so quietly in the sky. Whatever catches your attention and leads you into drifting to nowhere's land, that's silence, that's prayer, the closest to the divine.

Try Silence...

Fragments of Iceland from Lea et Nicolas Features on Vimeo.